by Jeanne Dams
—Seneca, 8 B.C.–A.D 65
2
HER RELIEF WAS PREMATURE. As she rounded the corner, she saw Mr. Williams standing in the doorway of his pantry. His face reminded Hilda of a prune. An angry prune.
“And dare I ask, Miss Johansson, to whom you were speaking just now? Or do you consider yourself too valuable an employee to be expected to follow the rules of this household?”
She held fast to her temper. When the butler called her Miss Johansson he was dangerously angry. “It was my little brother, sir. He—he came on an urgent errand. I sent him away as soon as I could. Now I must go and clean—”
“You will stay here and answer my questions. Why was your brother not in school? Or is he as ready to flout rules as you appear to be?”
Hilda clenched her jaw. “The matter was urgent, sir. He has gone back to school.” She knew Mr. Williams would be even more incensed by the details of Erik’s tale.
“I’m not at all satisfied, Hilda. You have not explained why he came here. What are you hiding from me? Is it that your caller was not your brother at all?”
If Mrs. George hadn’t come into the servants’ quarters just then, Hilda might have said a great many regrettable things.
“Oh, good morning, Hilda, Williams.”
“Good morning, madam. Is there something you wish?” His manner was stiff. Not only did he hate being interrupted when he was dressing down a subordinate, but he did not approve of the mistress of the house venturing into the backstairs regions.
“No, no, I’m just going to show Mrs. Sullivan how to make a new soup I want to serve for dinner on Saturday.”
“Very good, madam.” His manner continued to show just what he thought of the idea. Mrs. Sullivan did not appreciate being shown anything, especially not by a member of the family, all of whom were supposed to have the sense to stay out of the kitchen.
Hilda, however, was profoundly grateful. Mr. Williams would have to accompany Mrs. George, in an attempt to keep the peace, and she, Hilda, could escape.
She went about her work the rest of the morning with great care to avoid the butler. Fortunately, he had extra work to do in preparation for Saturday’s dinner party, a large affair for Colonel George’s professional and political associates. Mrs. George wanted the big silver punchbowl polished, along with the punch cups, all six dozen of them, and Mr. Williams would trust no one else to do the work—not that anyone else wanted to.
Thus it was that, when the front doorbell rang at about ten-thirty, Hilda was sent to answer it. She knew the caller, an elderly attorney named Barrett who was a close associate of Colonel George. “Good morning, sir,” she said with a curtsey.
“Good morning, Hilda.” He handed her his coat and hat. “Is the colonel in?”
“Yes, sir.” With most visitors she would have used the standard formula about not being sure, but Mr. Barrett was always admitted.
“Good. Would you tell him, please, that I apologize for calling without notice, but I would be very glad to see him for a few minutes, if I’m not interrupting.”
“Of course, sir. Will you come and sit down?” She led him to the small reception room off the big hall. She walked slowly, because Mr. Barrett had a game leg. His limp was pronounced today, probably because of the cold. Hilda took a moment to stir up the fire. Mr. Barrett was shivering. “Excuse me, sir, but you look cold. Sit here by the fire and warm yourself. And would you like a cup of coffee, or tea? You look cold,” she repeated.
In fact, he looked terrible. His hands shook, and his face looked as though he hadn’t slept for days.
“Thank you, my dear, that’s very kind of you, but I’ll be fine. I am a little cold, but that’s a splendid fire.” Stiffly, he folded himself into a chair, crossed his long legs, and nodded a dismissal. Hilda went to find Colonel George. She did hope Mr. Barrett wasn’t ill. He was a nice man. She wondered what his urgent business was. Probably something political. This was an election year, after all, although January was very early to begin thinking about such things.
Once she had delivered the guest to Colonel George’s office, Hilda’s next task was the fireplaces. There were twenty of them, and they were all Hilda’s responsibility. Those in the bedrooms had been done earlier, of course, but the reception rooms, the dining rooms, Colonel George’s office, all these had to be cleaned and new fires laid in the morning, when there were few callers and the servants would not be seen about their duties. It made, in Hilda’s opinion, a lot of needless work. The big coal furnace in the cellar kept the house warm enough, at least for someone raised on a Swedish farm. And the fires in the rooms created soot that had to be dusted away, every single day, from tables and carpets and windowsills and ornaments and draperies and lamps.
Hilda didn’t actually do all the work, of course. There weren’t enough hours in the morning. She supervised Janecska and the other daily maids, with Anton, the footman, carrying the heavy coal bucket from room to room.
This morning the dailies seemed even slower than usual. Having looked over the drawing room and grudgingly approved what had been done, Hilda whisked into the library, to find Janecska and the two other maids huddled in a corner, whispering.
“And why are you not doing your work?” Hilda demanded.
“Haven’t you heard the news?” asked Sarah, the oldest and sauciest of the three. “I’d’ve thought you’d know all about it, being so much smarter than the rest of us.”
Hilda tapped her foot. “I do not know what you are talking about, and I do not care. The ashes will not clean themselves out of that fireplace.”
“Don’t you even care that a girl about your age is missing, maybe dead? Or no, beg pardon, a little younger than you, I guess. Miss Jacobs is only twenty-two.”
Hilda was quite sensitive about her age, and Sarah knew it. Twenty-three was getting well up into old-maid status, and marriage seemed a remote possibility unless several miracles occurred. Today, however, she didn’t respond to the insult. “Miss Jacobs! What do you know about Miss Jacobs?”
“Only what everyone’s saying. She’s a teacher at Colfax School, and—”
“Of course I know that!” said Hilda, interrupting. “She teaches my brother Erik.”
“Ooh! Then what do you know about her?”
“I know only that she is a very good teacher, and she did not come to school this morning. I think her parents needed her help. They live in Elkhart. Now you must—”
“People are saying she was in trouble,” whispered Anna, at sixteen the youngest of the maids. “They say maybe she went home to—to have a baby.”
“Or not to have it,” said Sarah in a meaningful voice.
“That is enough!” Hilda stamped her foot. “Miss Jacobs is a respectable girl, and this is a respectable house, and Mr. Williams does not allow that kind of talk. If you do not have that grate cleaned and a new fire laid in five minutes, I will ask him to come up and talk to you, and he will not be happy about it.”
The threat silenced them momentarily, but as Hilda turned her back to dust the windowsills, she heard Janecska whisper to Sarah, “The boy who brought the groceries said she had a big fight with her gentleman friend yesterday. And he thinks the man is somebody important.”
After that Hilda stood over them until the job was done, and gossip was curtailed.
After lunch Hilda climbed the fifty-odd steps from the kitchen level to her third-floor bedroom to change her clothes. She was going out, and she wanted to look pretty.
Her drab uniform dress was exchanged for a smart dark blue woolen skirt and her new white waist with the plaid taffeta ribbon trim. She arranged her blond braids in a careful coronet and topped them with a fearful and wonderful hat that her sister, Birgit, had concocted at the millinery shop where she worked after school. Hilda would never have been able to afford such a confection of feather and ribbon, but Birgit had made it of scraps and it was really very beautiful. At least Hilda thought so.
It was a pity she had to cover
up her finery with her old black cloak, but it was the only warm one she had, and the day was still bitter cold. The weather had been bad for nearly a month. Just after Christmas an iron frost had gripped South Bend, to the despair of farmers whose livestock were in danger of freezing to death. “At least it’s too cold to snow,” said the weather-wise, but they were wrong. It had snowed, and snowed again, and thawed a little, and snowed still more, so that now the streets were uneven with packed snow and ice, rutted by carriage wheels and pockmarked by the hooves of horses. The sidewalks were just as bad, making one’s footing uncertain at best.
Hilda walked down all the steps again, but before she left by the back door, she found her storm rubbers in the boot box and put them on, sighing a little. Decidedly it was not easy to look smart when going out in South Bend, Indiana, in the winter. Her scarf and gloves, pulled out of a cloak pocket, were of thick wool, knitted by her mother. They were not beautiful, but they were warm.
Hilda was not fond of these garments, but she was a Swede. Swedes learn early to be practical about winter dress.
She wasn’t meeting Patrick Cavanaugh today, which was unusual. A veteran fireman, he could usually choose the shifts he wanted to work, and he always tried to be free on Hilda’s afternoon off. This week, though, several men were ill with the respiratory ailments brought on by fighting fires in desperately cold weather, so the healthy members of the fire brigade were working double shifts.
Hilda had decided to do a little shopping of the kind she could certainly not do with Patrick at her side. She needed a new corset and had decided also to indulge herself with a readymade petticoat. She hated fine sewing, or any kind of sewing for that matter, and she wanted a pretty petticoat with several flounces to give her skirts the proper shape (and show a little when she walked). Even the cheapest kind would cost over a dollar, and she felt guilty about spending so much on herself, but Mama and the younger children didn’t need her help so much nowadays, and she had the money.
Her shopping took some time. Ellsworth’s Department Store had everything she wanted, but fitting a corset was a fussy business, which Hilda’s impatience didn’t make any easier. Once that purchase was made, she looked at nearly every petticoat in the store before choosing one that suited her. Her next purchase was some fine white wool to knit into a warm corset cover. She wouldn’t do the knitting, of course. Mama was a very good knitter who thought it her plain duty to keep all her children in warm garments. Hilda decided to buy a lace-trimmed handkerchief as a present for Mama. She would think it a wicked extravagance, but Hilda knew she would treasure it even though the lace was machine-made.
Finally, her shopping completed and her parcels ready to be sent home, she stopped at the candy counter and bought a penny’s worth of sourballs for Erik. Then she made her way—cautiously on the slippery sidewalk—to the central firehouse, where Erik should now be working at his job as stable boy. With any luck Patrick would be there, too, and they might be able to talk a little.
The newsboys were on the streets crying the early editions of the South Bend Tribune and the South Bend Times. Hilda had just two cents left in her purse, the cost of the newspaper. Mr. Williams forbade Hilda to read the newspaper, and though she did so anyway, at Tippecanoe Place she had to be stealthy about it. It was often the next day or even two days later before she could pull one out of the trash and sneak it up to her room. By that time the news was new no longer. She was torn now. Should she spend the very last of her money on something she could read soon anyway?
Thrift was her watchword, always. It had to be. Even though she had few expenses, living at her place of employment, she tried to save every penny she could. But she wanted to learn all she could, as well. There had to be, someday, a way out of servant-hood.
She heard the newsboys more clearly as she turned a corner. “Miss Jacobs found!” one of them was shouting. “Sensational development in Jacobs disappearance!”
Hilda hurried over, gave the boy two cents, and took a copy of the Times.
MURDER OF POPULAR TEACHER read the headline of the biggest story on the front page. Then in smaller type, Body of Miss Sophie Jacobs Discovered in Shed.
BY HAND OF A FIEND
—South Bend Tribune
January 22, 1904
3
ROOTED TO THE SPOT, heedless of the cold or the annoyed pedestrians swirling around her, Hilda read the account.
The body of a young woman had been found very early that morning in a cab shed not far from her rooming house. A cabman had come to hitch up his horses for the first business of the day and had found the body lying in a pool of blood. The face was so badly disfigured that the police had been unable for some time to identify the body as that of the popular young teacher. She had been dead for many hours, probably since shortly after supper the night before.
It seemed that Mrs. Schmidt, Miss Jacobs’s landlady, did not provide board for her roomers, so the young teacher had taken her meals down the street at Mrs. Gibbs’s. After supper, Miss Jacobs started off for her home only two blocks away, accompanied for part of her walk by Mr. Robert Barrett, a local attorney.
Hilda gasped. Mr. Barrett! Had he come to tell Colonel George something about the murder? Maybe that was why he looked so ill and distraught. Surely he couldn’t… Hilda wouldn’t let herself finish the thought. Respectable men like Mr. Barrett didn’t kill young women.
The paper went on to say that Mr. Barrett had bidden Miss Jacobs good night and turned off toward his own home when she was but a half block from her door. She had gone only a few steps more when, at the entrance to an alley, she had been accost- ed, dragged into the alley, and beaten so severely that her skull was fractured in three places. Her clothing had been torn, and there was—Hilda shuddered—a large, bloody handprint on the bodice of her dress.
According to the evidence in the snow, she had not died in the alley, but had been dragged, still living and still struggling, to the cab shed at the far end. There she had lain, bleeding profusely, while the final death blows had been struck.
There was more to the story, much more, but Hilda was too sickened to continue. There was only one thought in her mind now. She must reach Erik before he heard of this. He would need her now.
She nearly ran to the firehouse, but when she half stumbled, half slid into the stable, she saw she was too late. Erik was sitting on a bucket, scanning a copy of the Tribune. A tear trickled slowly down one cheek. When he saw Hilda, he swiped his sleeve across his face and jumped up, knocking over the bucket.
“I told you! I said she was hurt and you didn’t believe me! You wouldn’t do anything, and now look!”
There was no answer to that, not just yet. Things would have to be said, but for now she simply enfolded her baby brother in her arms, murmuring words of comfort in Swedish.
He was in fact no longer a baby, and this was not the peaceful farm they had known years ago, when his worst hurts were scrapes and bruises that could be easily soothed with kisses and soft words. He clung to her for a moment, accepting the solace of her love and presence, but he wasn’t ready to let his grief overcome his anger. He pushed her away.
“Hush,” she said, as he opened his mouth to rail at her again. “This is very bad, yes, it is terrible, but now it is time to try to be sensible. You have read the story?”
“Not all of it. You know I’m not so good at reading English yet!” His voice rose to a shout.
“Hush,” she said again. “You will frighten the horses.”
“Huh! They’re never scared of me.” He lowered his voice, all the same. His love for the horses was deep.
“Then sit, little one, and let me tell you everything.” She gestured toward the bucket. Erik put it upside down on the floor again and sat, though with rebellion implicit in every line of his body.
Hilda stayed on her feet. “That is better. I must tell you, first, that your teacher died long before you knew she was missing. Yesterday evening, the police think. So you see, I coul
d have done nothing even if I had gone with you this morning.”
Erik played with a piece of straw and looked at the floor.
“I am sorry, little one. It is a terrible thing.”
“I am not little,” said Erik, still looking at the floor. “I’m thirteen, and I’m almost as big as you.”
“Yes. I will have to think of a new way to talk to you.” She didn’t smile, but her voice was warm.
Erik looked at her, his face set hard. “Don’t laugh at me.”
“I did not laugh, little—my brother. It is not a time to laugh.” “I liked my teacher.” He sniffled and ran his sleeve across his face again. “And she liked me. She was teaching me to read and write English, really good, and she didn’t think I was stupid. She was the best teacher in the whole world, and somebody’s killed her, and I want you to find out who!” His voice cracked on the last word, and that embarrassment was, finally, too much. He broke down in sobs.
Hilda knelt beside him and held him. In a year, perhaps in a few months, as Erik grew to man’s estate, he would no longer allow her embraces. They embarrassed him now, if there was an audience. Here, with only the horses to see, she could still ease his hurt as she had his baby troubles.
When his storm seemed nearly to have blown over, and his stiffening showed that his self-consciousness was taking hold, Hilda walked over to one of the horses and stroked its velvety nose. The horse whinnied softly. It seemed to Hilda that he questioned her about his young friend’s distress. She murmured reassurances in Swedish. If they reached Erik’s ears as well, they would do no harm.
When she could hear no more sobs, she turned to Erik and fished in her pocket for a clean handkerchief. Erik never remembered about things like handkerchiefs.
He blew his nose and stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket. Hilda reached into her petticoat again and pulled out the bag of sourballs. “Here. I bought these for you.”
Erik took them suspiciously. “Candy won’t make up for—” “That is not why I give it to you. No, it is not enough, but it is something, and it will make you feel better. And if you will give me one, I would like to feel better, too.”
