by Joy Callaway
I hadn’t thought of it in a long while, but could still recall the way I’d felt when I first saw him emerging from the opposite side of the crowd gathered on the train platform after the matinee at McVicker’s, his teacher frantically clutching his linen suit jacket in the same manner as mine was grasping the sleeve of my new white polka-dot frock. The instructors had been keen to get the students in the trains as swiftly as possible. Will had been joking with his teacher, who pulled him forward with stern gusto, and I’d been unable to keep from staring. His smile was put on with ease, an inviting feature that drew the eye and held it there. I’d thought him exceptionally handsome. So handsome, in fact, that the moment he was close enough to notice me, I’d looked away for fear I’d blush, even when we’d been situated knee to knee on the train, sharing the last seat, even when he’d asked my name. Will had stood the moment he’d realized we’d both been intended as the last passenger, that there wouldn’t be another seat to be had. He’d had to bend over me, his lanky frame blocking the window, his arm balanced on my seat back.
“Amen!” he’d shouted, after long minutes of awkward silence, startling me to the point that I’d looked at him. “I’m only saying a quick prayer for you,” he’d said, “that I won’t crush you. You see, the last time I was on a train, I overturned the refreshment trolley and . . . there were casualties.”
“I’m sure the teacups had a pleasant life,” I’d replied, having taken his smile to mean he was speaking in jest, but I was met with silence.
“Lacy and Rachel . . . their limbs crushed,” he’d said, and turned his face away.
“I . . . I apologize,” I’d stuttered, horrified that I’d made light of a fatal accident.
“As you should,” he’d said, his countenance slowly brightening. “They were my sister’s favorite china dolls, brought all the way from New Jersey, and their demise has beholden me to her every whim for at least the next six months.”
We’d both laughed, and in that moment, the handsome stranger disappeared, replaced with my new friend, my Will.
A horse snorted, bringing me back to the empty stable, and I walked toward the tack room, thinking I’d sit alone and think.
I turned into the doorway and my heart stopped. Will sat on the wooden bench twirling the extinguished candle nub in his fingers. He didn’t lift his head.
“So, what’d he say?” Will asked. He didn’t look at me, fingers turning the candle around and around. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t. I wanted to come out with it straight away, to ask him to tell me what he meant by saying he was interested in the matters of my heart, but my voice refused to come. What if I’d misunderstood? What if he’d meant that he just cared for me as a sister or a friend?
“Did he apologize at least?”
Even in the darkness, I could see his eyes soften when they found mine.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Oh. Good,” he said as he rose. “I assume the two of you worked things out then.”
I shook my head, but he didn’t see me as he smoothed the black feathers along his jacket and continued, “Congratulations on becoming an Iota sweetheart, I hope—”
“I’m not. I gave the lavalier back.”
His brows pinched. I reached for his hand and his fingers closed around my palm. “There’s something I need to know, Will,” I went on. He tipped his head just slightly.
“What is it?” he asked.
I closed my eyes, reveling in the touch of his hand, praying I’d not regret what I was about to say.
“Right before I left . . . you said you had an interest in . . .” I stopped and tilted my head up to look at him and spoke before I could stop myself. “Do you love me?”
He drew a breath and his hand tightened on mine. I stared at his mouth, willing him to answer, but he didn’t.
“Beth, I—” Without a thought, I stood on my tiptoes and leaned in to his mouth. My lips brushed the rasp of his cheek, and I opened my eyes to find his closed, face turned toward the saddles along the wall. He gently pushed me away. I’d been wrong. The air suddenly felt thick, suffocating. I let my fingers go limp around his, but he didn’t let go.
“I do love you,” he whispered. The hair along my arms rose, and I looked up at him. He smiled. “I always have. Even back home, when our fathers wanted so desperately to make us a pair. I would have agreed from the start. But I never wanted to tell you for fear that you didn’t feel the same. And then, when I embraced you in the hall that day . . . I did it at first out of spite, to show Miss Cable that she didn’t affect me.” I looked away from him, the knowledge of his love for me chilled by the remembrance that he’d so recently been devoted to someone else, that the only reason he’d kissed me was to get back at her. “But the moment I did it, I knew I’d made a mistake. I forgot she was standing there, Beth. When she spoke to us, I could barely respond I was so stunned at myself, so angry that I’d kissed you that way. You deserved better. And since, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, wishing you loved me. It’s been horrible, watching you with Grant. Kissing you gave you my whole heart . . . a heart that I didn’t know I’d ever get back. ”
“I feel for you, too, you know,” I said, and realizing it sounded as though I still only regarded him as a friend added, “deeply.”
He laughed under his breath.
“Perhaps,” he said, “but I tried to tell you earlier and you didn’t hear me. You were too stunned by Grant’s betrayal to comprehend anything else.”
“He ruined our chance with the board. He nearly got me expelled. I was furious, Will. I didn’t—”
Will’s shook his head.
“I know. And I’m sorry for it. But anger wasn’t the only reason you went to him so quickly. I saw your eyes when I told you. You were hurt. You felt . . . you feel enough for him that you couldn’t wait another moment before you asked him yourself.”
I started to argue, but Will put a finger to my lips. “It’s all right, Beth. I want nothing more than to kiss you until my lips burn with the touch of yours, but I can’t,” he whispered. “I want your heart . . . all of it, and I can’t bear to think that he still holds a part of it.”
Grant’s face materialized in my mind—how his eyes had pooled with anguish as I’d turned and walked away. The remembrance made me feel hollow.
I clutched a handful of feathers at the back of Will’s jacket and pulled him closer to extinguish the sensation.
“I do care for you . . . and love you,” I said, knowing that regardless of the way I felt about Grant, I meant it. I’d always loved Will. He’d been there for me since the moment we met, and regardless of my insistence otherwise, there had always been an attraction.
“I’ll never tire of hearing you say that,” he said, letting me go. “And when your heart is whole again, when it’s fully yours to give, I’ll be waiting.”
17
It was snowing—a rather mild March storm, but snowing just the same—an unfortunate turn of weather since I was huddled behind the arms of an old holly bush without a cloak. I’d forgotten it at the dormitory this morning and there had been no time to retrieve it without being tardy to class. A frigid wind whipped over me and the sharp leaves bristled across my thin green silk faille sleeves and my cheeks. The sensation reminded me of Will’s rough face against mine. We hadn’t spoken in two weeks, besides a friendly hello in class, and it was killing me. I hadn’t seen Grant at all. The thought of either conversation from that night made me sick with sadness and regret.
The door to Richardson Library slammed and I hunched down further, rising back up as a man sauntered down the steps with his nose in a book. My knees burned, protesting the strain from sitting on my haunches, and I leaned back against the brick, extracting my cuffs from the holly snares while cursing Mary’s genius idea to spy on our prospective pledges. Though the Iota Gammas did the same thing, we had two reasons for doing it. Not only were we following these young women to verify their character, we were doing it t
o find their most guarded confidence, something that they wouldn’t want Whitsitt, or their peers, to know about. At first I thought the idea cruel, against the very fabric of sisterhood, but Mary insisted. Without some sort of private information, we wouldn’t be able to guarantee the silence of any women who refused our bid, and we certainly couldn’t afford to expand at the expense of expulsion.
So far, we’d found that Margaret Yance habitually stole paints from the art department in order to produce free-form modern art—a forbidden style; that Sarah Van Meier was at times seen promenading a little too closely with a much older physician in Green Oaks; that Collette Burns sneaked into the dormitory past curfew every Tuesday night after providing legal counsel to the incarcerated females of Green Oaks; and that Victoria Simkins skipped lunch to visit a tiny apartment on the edge of Whitsitt every other day to learn Greek from a tutor. We hadn’t been able to find a thing on Anne Rilk, though it hadn’t been for lack of trying. We’d taken turns following her everywhere—to and from classes, to an appointment with Mr. Stephens, to her father’s estate in Green Oaks, and we had come up blank, which was why I was hiding in the bushes. If we couldn’t find anything in the next five hours before we’d whisk our potential pledges to Mr. Everett’s estate, we’d have to leave her out.
I wiped a few snowflakes from my lashes and started to stand when the door hinge creaked and Miss Rilk emerged. A gust of wind coiled around the building, and I opened my mouth to catch my breath. I watched her do the same before she fluffed her black bangs, situated her red felt hat, and walked down the steps. I shuffled out from the row of shrubbery, legs burning, and stumbled after her, keeping a moderate distance.
Campus was mostly quiet. Classes had let out for the day and, in the white-gray of an impending snowstorm, it seemed that everyone had retreated directly into the warmth of the dormitories or the library. I pushed my hands into the folds of my black damask skirt and watched the whisper of gray smoke rise beyond the tree branches that concealed Everett Hall’s chimney, wishing I was cocooned in warmth instead of following a classmate.
Miss Rilk passed under the stone arch. I lifted my hands to my mouth and breathed into my leather gloves, wondering if I’d ever regain feeling in my fingers. My calves burned as I scaled the hill. I wanted nothing more than to lie down the moment I reached the dormitory, but knew I’d first have to hunt down Miss Zephaniah to check in for the second time today. I was looking forward to the semester being over and along with it, this tiresome practice of informing Miss Zephaniah of my every move.
Miss Rilk was gone. The realization struck me too late, as I made my way under the final stretch of oaks along the walk. I turned around, but didn’t see her behind me, and I knew that there was no way she’d made it all the way inside. I shuffled back down the hill, looking through the mass of skeleton branches and gnarled tree trunks for a splash of red, though the only shade of the color I could see was the enormous ribbon affixed to the wreath left over from Christmas still hanging on the front of the Whitsitt Five and Dime in the distance.
I was almost back to the arch when I spotted her. She was down the hill from me, talking to an older woman in a plain brown dress. I picked up my pace and made my way down the campus side of the wall until it curved. I leaned against the limestone, hoping I’d be able to hear her voice through it. I couldn’t get closer and risk her seeing me.
“It was certainly an experience, ma’am. And quite enjoyable, if I’m honest,” a husky female voice said. Miss Rilk laughed, and I waited for the woman to elaborate.
“I certainly hope Papa wasn’t too harsh. He nearly struck the last one.”
Wind whipped across the courtyard, and I pressed harder against the stone, hoping I wouldn’t lose her voice.
“He wasn’t. Only swore a few times and asked how it could be that I’d hired help so incompetent that in a matter of a day, they’d broken five place settings of china and left the stable doors open. Then he told me to get out.”
“Well, good,” Miss Rilk said. I couldn’t quite understand what she was up to, though I figured it had something to do with her father’s farm and the way it was run—or rather, who it was run by. “Here are your wages as promised. You can count it if you want.”
“No. I trust you,” the woman said. “You know, it’s none of my business, Miss Rilk, but how many of us have there been? Actors, I mean.”
I gasped, hoping she couldn’t hear me.
“Oh. You’re the thirteenth. That’s my lucky number, see, so I’m thinking you’ll be the last. He’ll come to his senses eventually and let me run the place like I was born to.”
The moment she said it, I saw the determination in her face when she’d mentioned training her father’s employees the night of the winter ball. It was the same sort of resolve that Katherine had.
“I hope you’re right, my dear,” the woman said. “Though you may have to end your relationship with Mr. Stephens first. Your father goes on and on about the intelligence and competency of your beau, saying what a wonderful successor he’d be.”
“Sam is a nit when it comes to business.”
“I didn’t mean to rile you,” the woman said. “I was only telling you what I’d heard. What would be the harm in letting your father think Mr. Stephens was running the place anyway? He could be the figurehead, you could be the brains and hands and feet.”
“No,” she said, her voice icy. “That’s not good enough. It will be me. Good day, and thank you.” I waited for a reply, but heard none.
“Are you being punished?” Will’s voice startled me and I whirled toward him. “If you are, you’re free to lift your nose from the corner. Whoever’s supposed to be keeping watch is gone. The walk to Everett Hall is clear.”
He stood on the snow-covered pathway laughing at my position pressed against the wall and gestured toward the arch with the black bowler he’d taken off. I wanted to say something smart, but the sight of him stole my wit. He stared at me, doubtless awaiting my response. I walked toward Will, wondering what I should say. He’d begun our conversation as though nothing had changed, as though he hadn’t been keeping his distance, as though he’d never told me he loved me. His indigo eyes looked lighter in the pink and gold of sundown, gray jacket hanging neatly over his tall frame. I noticed that it hadn’t a wrinkle.
“Meeting President Arthur today?” I asked, deciding to match his tone. I cast my eyes down and toyed with my mother’s ring in an attempt to stop thinking of the way he’d looked at me the last time we’d stood this close.
“No.” His eyes wandered over my shoulder to the arch behind me, and suddenly, I knew. He was meeting a woman; he had to be.
“You’re waiting for someone, aren’t you?”
Before he could answer, I turned to walk away. I couldn’t bear to watch him struggle to come up with an explanation, to hear the excuse that the appointment and the woman meant nothing. He didn’t really love me. How could he? He’d only waited two weeks before deciding to move on.
“Beth, stop.” Will clutched my wrist. “You couldn’t possibly think that I . . . I told you I love you. I meant it. You misunderstood.” He ran a hand over his face. “I applied for an apprenticeship with Dr. Dillenger, Meredith Dillenger’s father, just to see if I should branch out from under my grandfather’s wings, but I didn’t get it. He hinted that it was because she spoke poorly of me and so I wrote to Miss Dillenger to see if she’d meet me. I wanted to know why.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought that you . . that you were meeting another woman for . . . for—”
Will shook his head and took my hand. “I’d be offended at your assumption if it wasn’t so characteristic.” He pushed a stray tendril back from my face. “I’ve finished with that, Beth.”
I leaned into him, craving his touch after weeks of distance.
“Dr. Dillenger is a fool for passing you up,” I said. “It’s true that you’re no star in the classroom, but I’d wager you know more about the practical application of
medicine than almost anyone else.”
Will shrugged.
“Perhaps. Have you heard any news from the hospitals?”
“Yes. A rejection last week from Kankakee State.”
“For the insane?” He furrowed his brow.
“They have an acute care hall. Regardless, the letter did mention that since I was a female, they’d be happy to consider my application for their school for nurses.” I exhaled, feeling the weight of disappointment at my shoulders. “I applied to some others though—The New England Hospital for Women and Children, Bellevue in New York—”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m sorry that you’re having such a time with this and I’m sorry that I’ve been distant.” He lifted my hand and kissed it. “I don’t want you to have any question of the way I feel for you. So, I’ll tell you again—I’ll wait. For as long as it takes. I know you need time, Beth.”
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t, that I was his right now. I knew how much I loved him. But, as I started to say it, I remembered the way I’d felt standing in Grant’s room, the way he’d looked at me when I pressed his letters into his palm, and a tiny bit of my heart throbbed. As subtle as the pain was, it still bore Grant’s name.
* * *
Miss Zephaniah stopped me the moment I walked through the door of the dormitory and escorted me into the great room. It was sweltering, the fire of hell radiating from the hearth. I wanted to ask her what I’d done—it wasn’t even past curfew—but I held my tongue.
“This . . . man is here to see you,” she said, her voice echoing through the mostly vacant room, reverberating off the soaring wooden beams. She narrowed her eyes at Mr. Sanderson, who was standing by the mantle surveying his gold pocket watch, pretending not to notice. The room was startlingly silent otherwise. Most of the women had likely retreated to their rooms to dress for dinner.
“I appreciate it, Miss Zephaniah,” I said.
“He asked for the woman in black first, and then for Miss Sanderson, but neither seem to be available,” she said. Miss Zephaniah always referred to Mary by that term, making it clear that she found her choice of costume unsuitable. She glared at me as though she knew their absence meant we were up to no good.
