by L. K. Rigel
To Earn Her Keep
A natural storyteller and a bit of an actress, Igraine made learning fun. At first, she taught French, Bible verse, and spinning. Later she added citizenship, and even later, geography. In keeping with the school’s reputation for modernity, spinning was abandoned for needlework.
The hard part was in loving her little charges so well. She hadn’t expected to be so drained or to care so deeply. But she did love them for the most part, and for the most part they returned her affection.
She rarely had five minutes in a day to herself. The girls were so young, some barely eight years old, and they missed their mothers. The younger ones often clung to her skirts, asking questions or telling tales of the latest butterfly caught or frog returned to the pond. They tried to follow her to the kitchen where she chopped vegetables and kneaded bread, but Cook put an end to that after someone dropped a basket of eggs while “helping.”
There was no refuge in the bedroom she shared with a series of housemaids, immigrant girls who worked for practically nothing and wanted as much from Igraine as her students did.
“Igraine, tell me a story. I cannot sleep.”
“Igraine, close the window. Spirits might come in.”
“Igraine, would you ask Mr. Mark to give me leave? My mother is deathly ill and there is no one to attend to the little ones at home.”
She was free on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. On Sundays she was expected to attend church services with the boarding girls, but on Tuesdays she could do as she liked.
She accepted Mr. Mark’s judgment that she was destined to attract no mate, but she nonetheless had a girl’s tender heart and the feelings that went with it. It hurt to hear carefree students her same age and even younger chatter mindlessly about their beaux or the young men they hoped to captivate at this picnic or that dance when they went home.
She compensated for her neglected heart by indulging her curious mind. In 1811, when she was nearly seventeen, she discovered the Philosophical Society. The group met the first Tuesday evening of each month at the hall on the Common and sponsored lectures open to the general public. As a teacher, it was perfectly acceptable that she should audit these lectures to improve herself. She determined to become a member.
At the first meeting she attended, the hall was filled with amiable people who greeted each other with delight and launched into animated conversations. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. As the scene grew gayer, she lost her confidence. She didn’t know where she should sit. She decided to return to the school and try again the next time.
A fashionable young man blocked her way. “Are you looking for a chair?” He looked a few years older than herself. His blond hair cut to his shoulders was carelessly loose, and his suit was well-tailored. He had an easy smile, dark blue eyes, and looked as if he were about to tell a joke. He had no business speaking to a lady to whom he had not been introduced.
She walked around him, hoping no parents of her students were here. What might they say to Mr. Mark?
“Miss, please wait!” He caught up to her and actually touched her elbow. She shrank from him, and he held up his hands as if in surrender. She then realized how comical it all was. “There. A smile. You must not think me too churlish.”
No, he was too charming. She really had to get out of there.
“Look, give me a chance? You are Miss Igraine Fiddyment, yes?”
This was terrible. How could he know who she was? She had felt so grown up in coming tonight, and now she felt like a child.
“I am George Mark, Matthew Mark’s nephew. I have seen you once or twice at the school. We haven’t been introduced, and I apologize for accosting you back there, but you looked so lost. I felt it my duty to rescue you.” His duty. As if she were a maid in a romance.
She’d been self-sufficient enough years to have forgotten what it was like to be cared for. George Mark was utterly agreeable. How could a relative of the dark and dour Mr. Mark be so light and congenial?
“I’m sorry I was rude.” She offered her hand. “Yes, I’m Igraine Fiddyment.”
“But you were not at all rude,” he said easily. “This is naturally an awkward meeting. Would you allow me the honor of escorting you to a chair? The lecture is beginning, I think.”
Throughout the lecture, George Mark whispered in Igraine’s ear. He called his uncle “Books” because his name evoked the first two books of the gospels. He himself was named after George Washington. “What George of our generation was not?” he said with bemused exasperation.
At intermission, he went for punch and returned with a young lady. “This is Miss April Westerman.”
Igraine trembled with embarrassment. How could a man look at her twice when such loveliness was in the world? Miss Westerman had red-gold hair and green eyes. Her skin was radiant with good health and no blemishes, and the faintest scatter of freckles across her nose made her pretty face interesting. Her figure was perfect, soft and plump in all the right places. Next to her, Igraine was a broomstick.
“April is a teacher too, at Mrs. Johnson’s Girl’s Academy,” George said. “The competition.” He treated Miss Westerman too casually to be in love with her, but how could he not be?
“I’m glad to know you.” Miss Westerman said, offering her hand. She didn’t know she was pretty.
“Ah, here is April’s brother, George.” George Mark made the further introduction.
“George?” Igraine shook the brother’s hand.
“You see?” said George Mark. “We Georges are everywhere!”
They all laughed. Everyone was clever. Everyone was delightful. Igraine forgot that she was plain. She was afraid that George Mark would ask to walk her home, but he must know his uncle would have something unpleasant to say about that. At the end of the evening he said, “I suppose Books will let you out of the convent for the next meeting?”
Back at the “convent,” the world was brighter. She didn’t mind the romantic musings of the other girls now. She heard her roommate’s complaints with a kindness that she now realized she’d heretofore withheld. She thought she might make a new waistcoat of the fabric she was currently embroidering. She wondered what colors George Mark liked.
During a daydream of George Mark, one of her girls let out a sharp shriek and began to cry. The other Mr. Mark stood over the sobbing child with his ever-present baton, and the child glared at Igraine. Indeed, Igraine felt she had failed her little charge.
“Mr. Mark!”
Mr. Mark opened his mouth, but Igraine cut him off. “Let us step out.” She left the classroom, praying that he would follow. He did.
“Mr. Mark.” She was terrified, but she tried to sound firm. “You simply may not strike the girls in my presence. I will not stand for it.”
“You will not stand…”
“This is not a threat. It is a fact. I mean that I cannot abide it. Of course you will do as you like in your own school.”
“Should I be grateful for that?”
“But I tell you that if you strike a student again in my presence, I shall leave. I don’t know where I’ll go, but go I will.”
Mr. Mark stared down on her with the malevolence his small mind had nursed over the years. His hand slowly advanced toward her and rested upon her shoulder. It was as if something unholy were drawing out her life’s energy. Their eyes locked and held each other, and then he grunted a little and walked away.
From that moment, the girls were safe from Mr. Mark when Miss Fiddyment was in the room. Love had made her brave. She had never been so happy, so sure of her worth. She could not bear the three weeks before she would see him again. Unless he came to the school. Perhaps he would, now that they semi-properly knew each other.
No. That would be foolish. In fact, she must hope he did not.
At the next meeting of the Society, Mr. George Mark did not appear. Though the lecture was one she was looking forward to, she felt a little awful, a little rejected.
“Good e
vening, Miss Fiddyment!” called Miss Westerman. “Oh, I am so glad to see you here. The men are not coming tonight, the rascals.”
The men! The rascals! There was such convivial fun in the way Miss Westerman laughed.
“My brother says he would be bored to tears hearing about the necessity of public education. I told him that he and George Mark are both very bad citizens, but there was no moving him. Come, let us find a place to sit.” She took Igraine’s elbow as if they were sisters and led her in to the hall.
Igraine was so happy. It was wonderful to have such a vivacious friend and to be young in the world, enrolled in the noble task of forming the next generation of American citizens. She would see Mr. George Mark at the next meeting surely. And she did. A month later, she and Miss Westerman and Mr. George Westerman had just taken their seats for a lecture on “The Tragic Death of Mr. Alexander Hamilton,” when Mr. George Mark arrived.
“Oh, he has brought Charity. How grand,” Miss Westerman said, without enthusiasm, waving so that George Mark could see her. Miss Westerman introduced Miss Fiddyment to Miss Charity Waters, Mr. George Mark’s fiancée. She was a lovely girl, seventeen, with porcelain skin and deep blue eyes. She wore the newest fashion from France. Mr. Mark barely acknowledged Igraine’s presence.
The seasons rolled on. Summers were more humid, winters colder. The pervading hunger in her spirit and her body receded to dull background noise. There was a light, however, and that light was her friendship with April Westerman. They shared their sorrows and successes as teachers. Miss Westerman convinced Miss Fiddyment to switch from the Congregational Church to the Unitarian Church, a change which had the added benefit of scandalizing Mr. Mark. When George Westerman died of pneumonia, Igraine was there to comfort her friend.
Igraine did enjoy small consolations in her modest life. Early on, she discovered the pleasure of causing Mr. Mark minor grief, and one day she caused an irritation far more than minor. It was the year she and April both turned twenty, and April could no longer stand it that Igraine was not being paid for her services.
“Really,” she said. “A freezing room, a few scraps of food each day and your pick from the church ragbag do not constitute proper payment. Even an orphaned female should make actual money.”
“I suppose you are right.”
“Mrs. Johnson is ready to offer you a position. She is eager to. And she will pay you seven dollars a month in addition to your room and board. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t reached your majority. You must be paid something for your labor. If you were a man, he’d have to pay you at least twenty dollars a month.”
“In so many ways, Mr. Mark is despicable,” Igraine said. “But the truth is I’m used to him. And if I left, what would happen to the girls? But I promise to speak to him about wages.”
“Think of this, Igraine. You could buy shoes that actually fit you.”
The thought of better-fitting shoes certainly appealed. When she lived with her aunt and uncle and her shoes were made for her, her feet had never hurt. It would be such a pleasure to be able make small purchases from time to time, a gift for her friend, Miss Westerman, little treats for the girls.
That afternoon when she broached the subject, Mr. Mark was incredulous. “How can you speak of money! When I think what I have spent these five years keeping you fed, in clothes, personally seeing to your education...”
“I know I am grateful you didn’t turn me out, Mr. Mark, and that you’ve let me earn my keep these five years. But the fact is Mrs. Johnson has offered me a private room and seven dollars a month if I will come to her.”
Mark’s face was a darkening purple, but she was reasonably sure he wouldn’t strike her. She said nothing and waited. When it appeared he wouldn’t respond, she moved to the door, “Well, then. I’ll tell Mrs. Johnson she may have me.”
“Wait.” Matthew Mark turned his back on his ungrateful protégé. It was inevitable she should ask for money, and paying her some small token would not do him injury. But he was furious to be met with a demand like this. It would set a bad example were he to submit. And yet he couldn’t afford to lose her. More and more often, people sent their daughters to him on account of Miss Fiddyment’s reputation.
It wasn’t fair. She had social talent and everybody loved her, whereas he toiled unheralded behind the scenes to no one’s appreciation. Fair or not, if she went to Mrs. Johnson there was no telling how many of his students would follow. “I can give you six dollars a month,” he sneered.
Six dollars. It was the private room she wanted. She would have taken that and no money. She knew she should leave anyway and take the position Mrs. Johnson offered. But Igraine didn’t like Mrs. Johnson, a silly woman who chattered constantly. As much as she loathed Mr. Mark, they had worked out a routine where he pretty much left her alone. And the matter of the girls was real. Who would protect them if she left?
“And a private room,” Mr. Mark added.
He was afraid! He was afraid she would leave. An infusion of confidence made her bold. “The room, and six dollars a month,” she said, “with a rise to eight a month in two years’ time.”
“Done.”
Though her heart pounded, she tried to appear nonchalant. “Jemima Fordham is leaving at the end of the term. I will take her room when she goes.”
“Agreed!” Mr. Mark threw his arms up in a show of exasperated defeat. He walked away before she could strip him of anything more. She had claimed the best of the rooms, with an efficient fireplace and a cheerful view and an attached sitting room. He stopped. Considering her standing, it was fitting that she have that room. Why had he not thought of this before?
She could use the sitting room as a parlor to take over the interviews he found so onerous. Yes, this was for the best, a shrewd move. He shuffled away to his dark study in the back of the building and congratulated himself on his clever business acumen.
Once Igraine recognized Mr. Mark was a coward beneath his tyrannical bluster, she learned to let him have his way in the many petty matters he clung to and stand up to him when it mattered. She was able to implement quite radical methods, banning corporal punishment among the other two teachers and encouraging the development of the imagination in “her girls.” She believed that she led a rather good life.
In one thing Mr. Mark was adamant. He refused to purchase the 1810 fourth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica for the school’s library. It was so modern, it even had an entry for geology. “I can bend, Miss Fiddyment, but I cannot break. We will have no geology under this roof. You may have gone over to the heathen Unitarians, but I run a godly school!”
“Mr. Mark, you don’t—you cannot ascribe to the work of Bishop Ussher. You don’t believe the world is only 5800 years old?”
“Silence!”
She didn’t press the matter, but she could no longer live under Mr. Mark’s geology-deprived roof.
Picnic
1814, Shermer Landing
“Herr Zehetner, dear, come sit by the fire. The wind is fierce this morning.”
Marta enjoyed having Carl Zehetner around the house. He had a sweet disposition and he watched the babies with a keen eye. She fitted a quilt over his knees and handed him a mug of coffee and milk sweetened with honey and spiced with nutmeg and cardamom.
“Kaffee ist gemutlich,” he grunted. “Wo sind die kinder?”
“Jonnie! Eleanor!” Marta called out.
“Here we are.” Gisela came into the kitchen with her youngest son, Jonnie, and Marta’s daughter, Eleanor. She gave the children each a cookie and kissed her father-in-law. “Watch the kinder, eh, Vati?”
“Ja, an old man can be useful yet.”
“I’m not a baby!” Six-year-old Jonnie was indignant.
Marta picked up Eleanor and kissed her cheek. After the kitten hayloft, Marta had become pregnant with her son Harry. She produced Samuel two years later. It had seemed there would never be a female child born on The Farm. The Zehetners by then had seven sons, and the Sing
ers were grateful for their living two.
On December 12, 1811, Eleanor had come into their world and was immediately the favorite of all, a sweet and even-tempered little girl who was never sick and was always happy.
The Farm prospered due to Jonathan while Leopold directed his passions elsewhere. He was enthusiastic about politics and served on the local elections board. He wrote articles for The Post about the Founding Fathers and philosophers like Rousseau and Locke.
When the opportunity arose, he bought The Shermer Post.
Today America was again at war with the British. Some called it The Second American Revolution. Dieter had nearly been killed at the River Raisin Massacre, saved when Jonathan sent a ransom. Dieter came home with a chronic pain in his shins and a permanently sad countenance. Willie, twenty-five years old this year, was with Andrew Jackson’s militia in Louisiana, an officer in the Army. His letters, unlike Josef’s brief mystical notes, were long and full of commentary.
It was clear that after the war Willie would make politics his career and the Goodsons’ youngest daughter Amy his wife. He often wrote of his ambition to live in Washington and work for improvements in the lives of common soldiers and veterans. Leopold had hopes of Willie being appointed to the Senate from Massachusetts one day—another good reason to make Jonathan a landowner sooner than later.
Gisela showed Marta an envelope then kissed it and returned it to her apron pocket. “It’s from Willie.”
“Is he coming home soon?” Marta said.
“I haven’t opened it. I’m waiting until the men come in for the picnic.”
“Oh, drat. You have better self-control than I,” Marta said. “But the letter will add to our celebration.”
“Oh, dwat!” Little Eleanor repeated.
“What celebration?” Gisela lowered her voice. “Are you with child?”
“No, not that. Oh, I can’t keep my tongue. You must pretend to be surprised or you’ll ruin Mr. Singer’s fun. The deed has been recorded for your land. He’s gone to town to collect the document to present to Jonathan at the picnic today.”
