Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  He let out a long breath. “Before I do, you have to promise not to tell another soul.” He looked straight into my eyes. “It must be kept secret, or my life is in danger.”

  “Your life?” I thought he was jesting. But there wasn’t the usual glint in his eye and he looked as grave as I’d ever seen him.

  “Promise me, Margaret.” He sounded miserable.

  I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I promised. God’s truth, I didn’t like doing it. Keeping secrets has a way of leading to ruin.

  And so he told me. A lad he knew when he lived in New York had recruited him to help with a secret plan. “It’s a kind of school,” he said. “They’ve asked me to teach.”

  “Teach?” I said. “I thought it was a factory job. Teach what?”

  He looked down and reached for my hand but I tucked it behind my back.

  “Tell me,” I said. “You promised the truth.”

  He let out a long breath. “When I was working on the tunnel, I was one of the lads who set the dynamite. I’ll be teaching others how to make it.”

  “Dynamite?” I’d read about dynamite, knew it was deadly and wicked. “What lads?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said.

  I took a step back. “And that’s the reason you’re after going to Brooklyn? To make dynamite?” I felt the anger boiling in me, pumping through my body. “You lied to me. Said it was a factory.”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t move.

  All at once, I understood. It struck me quick as embers jumping from a grate. “They’re Fenians, aren’t they, these lads? They’ll not be making dynamite to dig tunnels. It’ll be for blowing up buildings and hurting people. Killing them.” My words were coming out fast, all in one breath. “Are you forgetting my own brother died in a blast? If it wasn’t for dynamite, he’d still be alive.”

  I couldn’t read the look on Patrick’s face. I took another step away. “What I don’t understand is why you wanted me to go with you. What would make you think I’d want to be any part of such a plan?”

  He gave his head a shake, like he was just waking up. “Because you’ve got a fighting spirit. Because you love Ireland.” He took a breath. “Because you love me and you’re going to marry me.”

  I felt sick. I stared at him, wondering if anything he said was true.

  “I’m not,” I said, oddly mindful I was standing between two broken gravestones. “I won’t marry a man who makes dynamite for killing folks. I’ve lost one lad I love to the infernal machine and I won’t be losing another. Our engagement’s done.”

  He stood like a statue, looking at me.

  “Leave,” I said. “I don’t want to be seeing your face again. Ever.” He took a step toward me, but it was uncertain. “Don’t touch me,” I said. “Just go.”

  And so he did.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I didn’t go back to Kelley Square that day. Walked straight to the Homestead and shut myself in my room. My heart was beating too fast and my skin felt flushed. Wasn’t from the walking—came from the riotous feelings thrashing inside. They tumbled in waves—anger, regret, relief, sorrow.

  I kept thinking of Patrick’s face just before he walked away. Searing, it was—near stopped the breath in my throat. I’d watched him out of sight before I moved. Now one minute I wanted to take back what I said and marry him next week. The next I was so angry I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him again. I wondered if I should tell a policeman or a judge what he was doing in Brooklyn. I knew it must be against the law. Then I wanted him to hold me in his arms and tell me it had all been a grand prank to make me laugh. Seemed like every feeling in the world was my very own.

  Didn’t take long before my tears started coming. I sat on my bed, bent over my knees and weeping. I was sorrier than I’d ever been in my life. Yet I knew I’d done the right thing sending Patrick away. I could never marry a man who made bombs. No matter how I cared for him. No matter how noble the cause.

  I prayed a long time—prayed for myself and prayed for Patrick. And for all the folks who might be wounded and killed by his dynamite. I was getting off my knees when I spied my trunk and thought of Emily’s poems lying there. I opened it and stared down at them—nestled against the side with its fading red and yellow paper. I took out one of the booklets and commenced reading.

  I read slowly. Sure, I couldn’t have read fast if I’d wanted to, for Emily’s writing was so hard to work out. I read on and on, and when I finished one booklet, I took up another. I didn’t try to get the meaning of the verses, just let the music of them wash over me like a tide. God’s truth, I sat up half the night in the pool of light from my lamp, her words scattering through my mind. Like sparks they were—tiny scraps of light. I didn’t half understand them. Yet for some reason they filled my heart.

  * * *

  “He wouldn’t say a word to anybody,” Tom told me. He was shaking his head over Patrick as I walked with himself and Mary back to Kelley Square after Mass the next Sunday. It was a bright fall day with the leaves flaring red and yellow against the sky. “Had the look of a lad condemned to the gallows, he did. Bowed low like an old man carrying a weight on his back. Didn’t seem like himself at all.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “He’s gone and that’s the end of it.” I knew Tom and Mary were blaming me for Patrick’s misery. I’d told them we had a fight and broke the engagement and he went off to Brooklyn. But I hadn’t told a soul what he’d be doing there, and had no plans to. Now everybody was asking why he left so sudden and I was struggling to find a good enough answer.

  Mary, who had her own doubts about the lad, tried to console me. “You’re well rid of himself,” she said. “I knew he was a rascal and a rogue the minute I laid eyes on him.”

  In truth, her opinion of him had changed more than once, but I nodded and said I should have listened to her in the first place. “Don’t know why I couldn’t see it,” I said.

  “Sure, there’ll be other lads,” she told me. “There are as many good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. And you’re young yet.”

  But the both of us knew that wasn’t true.

  * * *

  There was nothing for my sadness but plunging myself into life at the Homestead. I’d been doing my job all along, but half my mind had been on Patrick—wondering when I’d see him, where we’d go together next. Now I was free of all that.

  But in truth, it’s not so simple a thing, casting a lad out of your mind when he’s been living there for years. He haunted me, Patrick did. I kept seeing his sorrowful eyes the day he told me the truth. And my dreams were troubled by his kisses. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with my lips warm from tasting his. Took a powerful determination to turn my mind away.

  I was wearing out. It was slow but I could feel my liveliness thinning as the strength drained out of me. All the lifting and bending and climbing and kneeling were crowding my muscles and melting my bones and I woke up aching every morning. My belly hurt and I lost my appetite. I could look at a sweet cake all morning and not want to take one bite.

  When the fever came I knew the typhoid was back. It’s a terrible scourge and takes all the strength from your bones. I could scarcely walk across the kitchen without needing to sit down and rest. So it was off to Kelley Square for me, where Mary could nurse me proper. Stayed the whole month of October, I did.

  Mam used to say it’s a dangerous month, October. The curtain between the worlds is thin and the Faeries can slip through to plague even a saint. It’s best to keep your body busy and your mind clear and stay on guard for accidents and hauntings. But I was flat on my back and feverish besides, with nothing to distract me from the terrors. They came at night, all the demons and dark spirits I’d heard of in tales as a lass—Pookas and Changelings and Kelpies from the sea. When the crisis passed, I was limp as a bird just hatched from its egg. It was a long, s
low mending but I healed. And as my body healed, so did my mind. The thoughts of Patrick eased and stopped scorching my heart.

  By November I was strong enough to go back to the Homestead. And didn’t Emily herself meet me at the door and pull me into her arms like I was her long-lost sister instead of a maid? Made me blush with the surprise of it. It pleased me, to be sure.

  * * *

  The seasons went round—a wet fall turned into a winter bleak and bitter as they come, with snow up to my knees and ice under the eaves, then a slow spring following. But by April the snow was melted and we were on our way to summer.

  When it came it was glorious. Meg gave her notice at the Evergreens and married her sweetheart, James. Emily was well enough to spend long, happy hours in the garden with her birds and flowers and the music of poems in her head. Mother Dickinson was cheered by the warmth and seemed stronger. And St. Bridget’s Parish was growing with so many baptisms and confirmations it was hard to keep count.

  Sue Dickinson took a new couple into her circle—Professor David Todd and his pretty wife, Mabel. They were young and handsome and fresh from Washington, DC. Soon they were all the rage among the better sort in Amherst. Vinnie was particularly charmed by Mabel. All I was hearing from her was Mabel this and Mabel that, how musical and artistic she was and how she was soon to be calling at the Homestead. It seemed Mabel was longing to get to know the Myth of Amherst, and praying for an invitation. Vinnie begged Emily to come with her to the Evergreens so they could meet, but Emily would not.

  Then word went round Sue had told Mabel a scandalous tale about Emily. Said she once walked into the Homestead parlor and found her lying in Judge Lord’s arms. Vinnie was raging at Sue for spreading such nonsense, but it gave me a chill, for I couldn’t forget walking in on them myself.

  When Emily heard what was being said, the summer glow went out of her like water running from a bucket with a hole in it. She stopped sending notes to Sue and refused to see her. It was a terrible thing, for Emily trusted no one more. She’d always tried her poems on Sue, something she never did with another soul. I prayed the trouble between them wouldn’t last. But they’d have nothing to do with each other for months.

  Vinnie said Sue made up the story because she was jealous.

  “Sure, who could she be jealous of?” I asked. We were cleaning the parlor, which surely needed it. The open windows let in dust from the street, and it sifted down on everything in a gray-brown mist.

  “Why, Judge Lord, of course!” Vinnie straightened from the chair leg she was dusting. “Emily’s in love with him and Sue don’t like being replaced.”

  “Replaced?” The word squeaked out before I could stop it. Such a foolish idea.

  “Oh, those two.” Vinnie attacked the piano with her duster so fierce I saw feathers flying. “It was always Emily and Sue, Sue and Emily from the minute they met.”

  Sounded to me like Vinnie was the jealous one. Surprised me, it did—she’d always been devoted to Emily. But it seemed there was a bit of spite buried in her. I felt for her, to be sure. I knew how it was to be the younger sister—to always feel a little lower, to long for the respectful glance, the promise of fairness.

  * * *

  In September Mabel Todd finally came to the Homestead. Austin, it was, brought her, and she was handsome as Vinnie said, with her fancy dress and big eyes and the dainty air some mistake for innocence. But I saw right off she was up to no good. I know a minx when I see one and Mabel knew how to cast her eyes about, to be sure. Betty, the new maid at the Evergreens, had already told me Mabel was fond of flirting with young Ned. Said he was half gone on her, the poor lad.

  Vinnie was lovely that night, decked out in blue. She was desperate for Emily to meet Mabel and sent me three times to get her, but Emily stayed shut in her room. So Austin and Mabel and Vinnie sat in the parlor while I served coffee and gingerbread. Then Austin asked Mabel to sing for his mother’s pleasure and sent me upstairs to sit with her while she listened.

  God’s truth, the music was lovely. Mabel was a grand singer and knew how to work her voice and the keys same as she knew how to work a man’s desire. When she was done and I started back downstairs, Emily’s door opened a crack and she whispered me over. Pressed a note in my hand and said I should give it to the singer. I said it would make Vinnie happy if she gave it herself, but Emily closed her eyes and shook her head and never did come down to meet Mabel.

  Not that evening nor ever.

  * * *

  Not long after, Mother Dickinson caught a bad cough and started failing. Some days she seemed not to know where she was or the names of her own daughters. Every day she asked when the Squire was coming home. Tore my heart, it did. “Soon,” I always told her, and it was not a bold lie, for it seemed she’d soon enough be with him again. Like Emily said, the hardest part of caring for somebody wasn’t the work of it but the need to be pleating the truth.

  In the morning Mother Dickinson had to be lifted from her bed and put in her chair, and she was such a tiny stick of a woman by then it was no trouble for two of us. Usually it was Vinnie and myself moved her while Emily aired the bed and smoothed the sheets and plumped the pillows. Once a week she’d tuck a sachet of fresh lavender under the mattress.

  In November came the day we all were dreading. I was lighting the kitchen fire when Vinnie called me upstairs. Her mother had waked early after a fretful night and was moaning about her aches and pains. Sure, I was surprised, because it wasn’t like Mother Dickinson to complain. She’d been good lately—even had an appetite, swallowing every bite of the custard I made her the day before and asking for more. But even after Vinnie and myself carried her to her chair, she was mewling. Emily came in from her room, looking weary as her mother.

  “Go back to bed, Miss Emily,” I said, placing the pillow behind Mother Dickinson’s head the way she liked. “I’ll tend herself this morning.”

  Mother Dickinson gave me a tiny smile, looked at Emily and then at Vinnie, who was opening the curtains.

  “Don’t leave me, Vinnie,” she said in a loud voice. Then her eyes closed and a long rattling breath came out of her.

  I knelt down and crossed myself right there, for I knew she was gone. In truth, it was a blessing. A slow dying is the saddest kind, and the poor dear had been suffering for years. Vinnie cried, “Oh no!” and Emily made a choking sound. But neither one of them moved. It was as if they were struck to stone. Indeed, it was a cold, lonesome morning and that’s the truth of it, but it was sorrow froze them, not lack of a fire.

  Sure, I never blamed anybody for taking a death hard. It’s not for me to judge, especially if they’re not Catholic and don’t have the solace of the True Faith. But the death of a woman’s mam—that’s the worst calamity there is. And I didn’t have room in my heart that day for anything but love.

  * * *

  A death in the house makes for more work at a time when folks aren’t thinking clear. So it falls to the maid. I was the one laid the body out after giving Austin the sad news. Emily and Vinnie tried helping, but their minds were drifting too far, poor things. It wasn’t only their tears were shed that day, but my own too. In the years of tending her I’d come to think of Mother Dickinson as part of my own family. It’s curious how families grow wider the longer you live. A person can hold many dear and not all the same blood.

  After dressing Mother Dickinson in her best gray gown and brushing out her white curls for the last time, I fetched the undertaker. Her body was laid in its coffin, carried downstairs, and set in the hall where the Squire’s had been. The house filled up for the funeral, for many loved her and many more wanted to honor the family. Emily didn’t come down, but nobody expected her to.

  Mabel Todd sat herself in the family row beside Austin and Sue. Surprised me. It wasn’t proper at all—seemed to me she should mind her place at a funeral. At the collation after, she went from room to room, mingling with
the Amherst notables, like she was the hostess. Made me cross, it did. So I was in no mood to put up with her nonsense when I was carrying an empty tray from the library and spied her halfway up the front stairs.

  “What are you doing?” I said. Put down my tray on the hall table and marched right up those steps. “The collation’s downstairs, ma’am,” I said. I took her by the elbow. “I’ll show you the way, if you’re lost.” Lord, I was angry.

  She gave me a look would cut the Devil himself. “Don’t touch me!” She shook me off like my hand was corrupted. “I’m just having a look around. I’m not harming a soul.”

  I scooted past her so I could block her from going higher. “No one’s to disturb Miss Emily,” I said. “That’s the rule here. Always has been. And always will be, while I’m maid.”

  She gawked at me, her eyes like stones in her face. “What an insolent servant!” She was near spitting when she said it too. But she turned around and went mincing back down the stairs.

  I wondered if Emily heard us from behind her shut door. It didn’t matter. I was doing my duty.

  * * *

  It was midnight before I finished that day and dragged myself upstairs, knowing there was still work to be done in the morning. Funerals always make a mess of a house and folks who are grieving are best aided by order and cleanliness. I’d just finished saying my prayers when there was a tapping on my door.

  It was Emily standing there in her nightdress with her hair down and her face looking weary as my own.

  “What can I do for you, miss?” I asked.