by Jane Steen
I shifted Sarah into a better position and looked anxiously both ways down the deserted road. Nothing.
I crossed the road and sat down at the foot of a large ash tree that grew opposite the gate of the Farm, one division bent oddly to the ground to mark an ancient Indian trail. I leaned my back against its rough bark and waited, a prey to anxiety but calmed by the relief of having breached the Farm’s boundaries. Martin. I shut my eyes, willing him to appear.
Despite the insistent whine of hungry mosquitoes, I dozed off for a short while. I was awakened by the soft clopping of a horse’s hooves and the quiet rumble of well-sprung wheels. A nicely kept gig halted near the gate, far enough away not to be seen from the inside of the Farm.
“Martin!” I hissed through clenched teeth, scrambling to bring my legs back to life and rise without disturbing Sarah.
I saw a white-blond head, bare of any hat, swivel round in an attempt to locate me. I stepped out into the road and was greeted by Martin Rutherford’s relieved smile. A flood of joy and relief spread into every limb: he had not turned away from me.
Martin sprang down from the carriage, landing easily on his long legs. He swept me a mock bow with his right hand, his left holding the horse’s bridle.
“I beseech your pardon for my late arrival,” he said in a low voice. Then he caught sight of Sarah, whose face was mashed against my shoulder in tranquil sleep. Her little cap had slipped, exposing her tuft of hair to the light of the moon.
“Is that really your baby?” There was wonder in his voice. I moved closer to him and let him look at Sarah, feeling his warm breath as he bent to look into her face. “Yes, she is quite like you. I could hardly believe your letter. I wondered at first if you were teasing me like you always did. But how …” His voice trailed into silence.
“How did I come by her? In the usual way, Martin,” I said dryly. “By doing what no respectable young lady does and declining to name the father to boot.” It was such a relief to be able to speak plainly of my wrongdoings and see no condemnation, no shock, in Martin’s eyes. I had always thought him to be a good man, and now I felt proud to call him my friend.
He tilted his head to one side and peered into my face. “You have grown up, young Nell. I thought as much from your letter, which, let me tell you, was a considerable surprise to me. I thought you were convalescing from illness in some Eastern city. Your mother is a skillful fabricator. No wonder she would never let me write to you.”
A breeze rustled the leaves of the ash tree and brought Martin out of his contemplation of the new Nell. “Let’s not stand here talking, Nellie. Where do you wish to go?”
“Could we go straight to your house?”
Martin’s gray eyes widened. “You propose to stay at my house unchaperoned?” he exclaimed, in tones befitting a maiden aunt.
I began to laugh as if I would never stop, my hand clamped to my mouth to muffle the sound, while Martin grinned at me with a bemused and somehow delighted expression. We were just as much friends as we’d ever been back in the days when he’d been the recipient of my childish confidences.
“Martin,” I gasped, “I can hardly claim to be a maiden in need of protection. Yes, I propose to hide out at your house for a few days until I can settle matters with my mother and stepfather. I will make it clear to Tabby that she should not tell another living soul and not imagine more than the situation warrants either.” Tabitha Stone was Martin’s housekeeper, almost seventy, and one of my devoted admirers since I was tiny. “After all,” I added, “you never receive visitors, do you?”
Even in the dim light I could see that Martin had flushed to the roots of his hair. I bit my lip; considering how nice he was being, that was a low blow worthy of the old Nell. The long, terrible years of his father’s dementia had kept visitors away from the Rutherford house, and neither Martin nor Ruth had resumed entertaining once the old man had finally passed away.
He said nothing and simply held out his arms to me. I positioned my left foot on the runner of his gig, and he hoisted me and Sarah up into the contraption with a single swift movement. Throwing in my small bag, he leapt up into the driver’s seat, gathered the reins, and touched his whip to the horse’s withers. He guided the gig in a tight circle and headed back the way he had come, the gig’s well-maintained wheels rolling silently over the damp dirt.
I reached forward with my free hand to touch Martin’s arm. “I’m sorry I teased you,” I said. “You are a true friend to help me like this.”
He grinned over his shoulder at me, and I knew I was forgiven. “I would help you for your mother’s sake even if I weren’t so fond of you, Nellie. What else could I do for my fiery little friend?” His smile brought back memories of a young man who could fly into a rage when treated unjustly by anyone else but who never minded if I drank from his glass, laughed at his clumsiness, or pulled his hair. I smiled back, happy to be with someone I could trust implicitly.
The gig ate up the miles, and Sarah rested contentedly against my shoulder. The hood of the gig was down, and the breeze felt good against my face and hair in the warm weather. Martin had not lit the lamps, the starlight being sufficiently bright for the road, and all I could see of him was the dark shape of his back and the stirring of his blond hair, gleaming white in the blue light. Eventually I too slept, rocked by the motion of the fast carriage and luxuriating in the feel of its velvet upholstery against my cheek.
THIRTY-ONE
I awoke to discover we were in a familiar place under some oak trees that reared a thick canopy of dark green leaves to the sky. I realized the gig had stopped at the edge of a small wood I had played in as a child: I was home in Victory.
The early sun gilded the trees with its dawn rays, and I could hear birdsong all around me. I was stiff and sore from sleeping in an upright position but felt much better for a few hours’ rest. Sarah wriggled in my arms and chewed on her fingers, making small noises of complaint.
“I must nurse her,” I said, and Martin, who had been intently watching me and my baby, flushed a little. He helped me down from the gig and led the horse over to a patch of coarse grass while I searched for a discreet patch of bushes in which to nurse Sarah and attend to my own needs.
The practicalities of the morning accomplished, I went to find Martin who was leaning against a tree watching the horse browse among the undergrowth.
“I have been thinking,” he said. “It is very early, but it might be unwise to drive the gig to my front door and have you publicly enter my house. If I tied the horse up here, we could take the trail that leads to my back porch and be there in twenty minutes. Then I will return for the gig, and if anyone sees me—well, I was simply taking the morning air.”
“An unlikely story, Martin, but bless you for it nonetheless.” I handed Sarah to my friend and reached up to take my bundle from the carriage seat. I turned round to see Martin staring at his burden with an expression of discomfort.
“I believe she may be a little damp.” He handed her back to me and wiped his hand on a convenient patch of moss.
I pleated Sarah’s gown so that it offered some protection for my arm and then held my bag out to Martin. “So let’s get to your house quickly. Maybe we could prevail upon Tabby to heat some water so that I can bathe her.”
We negotiated the path to Martin’s house easily, passing through the tidy vegetable garden and entering via the back door. Martin’s house was like his person: trim, spare, and devoid of fashionable clutter. His father’s dementia had often led the poor man to throw china and glass objects at the walls, and over time Ruth and Martin had learned to do without knickknacks. The house looked all the better for their absence.
“I am quite an old bachelor, you see.” Martin gestured toward a large sitting room where the polished surfaces of wooden furniture gleamed in harmony with the plainly painted walls. Beyond the room was a study lined with books and containing a huge desk on which piles of paper were neatly arranged.
“Not so o
ld, Martin.” My eye fell greedily on a stack of magazines and books depicting the latest fashions from Paris and New York. Next to them, a large basket held an enticing mound of swatches of fabrics.
Martin laughed. “Well, not old enough to commit myself to the state of matrimony just yet. My ambitions have not grown dull, Nellie. A store in Chicago to rival that of Mr. Field and his associates! Chicago may be a raw, young place now, but large fortunes are being made there, and one day it will be a great city like those of the East. I intend to dress the ladies of Chicago one day and make a name for myself.”
I raised my eyebrows but said nothing. Martin had talked about his dream of a large store in Chicago when I was just a child, but at that time it had seemed that his father would live forever and life would always pass Martin by. He had watched his friends leave to fight in the War and return scarred and battle-hardened and had no longer cared to keep company with them. I looked around the room, missing the small touches that had been there when Ruth was alive; but in truth, the house looked better stripped of cushions, doilies, and antimacassars, like a ship trimmed and ready for action.
“I will make coffee,” said Martin abruptly, “and Tabby will soon come down to complain that I am beginning the day too early for her. Then she will cry out in astonishment at seeing you, be thoroughly shocked about Sarah, say a thousand times that she would never have thought it of you and what must your mother think, and then fall to petting your baby and waiting on her hand and foot. Are we not fortunate, Nellie, to have servants who have known us since we were children and to know them so well ourselves that we can turn them around our little fingers?”
I laughed in agreement. “That sounds exactly like Tabby. As long as she does not get it into her head that you are Sarah’s father.”
Martin’s brows drew together, and a speculative look came into his eyes. “She will not believe such a thing if I tell her… Nell, are you going to inform me who the father of this child is?”
It was my turn to frown. “Not for anything in the world, Martin. Please do not ask me.”
Martin shrugged, seemingly dismissing the matter. “Come into the kitchen,” he said. “The stove will still be warm in there, and you can divest little Sarah of her damp clothing and wrap her in a blanket.” His expression softened. “And if I know you, you will soon be plundering me of my samples to make clothes for your daughter.”
He led the way and I followed, bouncing Sarah on my arm. The sheer normality of being back in Victory, albeit in the wrong house, was so strange and wonderful that I felt a lump in my throat. In my mind’s eye I saw Tess, Lizzie, and Ada rising from bed and discovering that Sarah and I were nowhere to be found—what would they be saying? Could Tess remain silent?
I wished, now, that I had informed Mrs. Lombardi of my plans. She trusted me, and I had betrayed that trust out of the fear that she would be duty bound to thwart my intentions. It seemed to me that one lie constantly engendered another, like an ever-replicating swarm. I kissed Sarah’s curls, the thought that I had begun her life with a lie forming a lump somewhere deep in my entrails.
THIRTY-TWO
Just as Martin had predicted, two days later I completed some new garments for Sarah from the abundant piles of samples he stored in his house. What was more, in the corner of the room where my daughter and I slept stood several bolts of fabric. Martin had made me a present of a sumptuous blue-gray dress material for myself, a more serviceable brown cotton for everyday wear, and the wherewithal to fabricate petticoats, pantaloons, chemises, and so on as befitted my return to the world. From his store he had also chosen hats and shoes that, although not made to measure as was the usual practice, were nonetheless an excellent fit. He had even, with some awkwardness, presented me with the latest style of corset.
“I have news,” Martin said, having cleared his throat heavily.
“Really?” I turned the corset over in my hands and looked up at him slyly. I rather thought Martin had noticed my tendency to omit the corset and was perhaps a little shocked.
“Your mother and stepfather have heard that you left the Poor Farm.”
“Ah.” I had been waiting for this moment and felt a small, hard lump form in my stomach.
“I happened to call upon them just at the moment when they received Mrs. Lombardi’s telegraph message. Your mother quite forgot that I was supposed to think you were convalescing out East and simply blurted out the whole story, baby and all.”
“My goodness.” I felt a tingling sensation in my hands as the thought worked through me. “Did—was my stepfather cross with her?”
“I will say one thing for Hiram, he always treats your mother with consideration. He did not shout or remonstrate with her. But he went quite red in the face.” Martin’s own fair face flushed a little at the memory, and he passed his hand over his mouth as if to stifle a laugh. “I pretended the correct degree of astonishment.”
“And—well, it is not at all funny, Martin—how did Mama react to the news that I had absconded?”
Martin perched on a chair. It was late in the day, and now that the drapes were closed, I had joined him in his sparsely furnished sitting room. During the day, I kept to the room in which he had established me, which overlooked the garden at the back of the house and the woods beyond.
“She is remarkably calm. She says that she feels in her heart you are safe, and she told me privately that she is glad that you have not had to be separated from your child. And then she looked at me in the oddest way, Nell, and told me that if I should ever come across you, I should give you any money or help that you needed, and she would reimburse me.”
I smiled, tucking the corset into the work basket that had once been Ruth’s. “I hope you did not blush, Martin.”
The pink flush that was so characteristic of Martin brightened his white face. “Fortunately, I was looking out of the window when she said that, and I did not turn around. Your mother is an astonishing woman, Nell. As dainty and delicate as a china doll but with an indomitable spirit.”
“Yes. But I wish she were not so deferential toward my stepfather.” I had not yet told Martin about my suspicions—my near certainty—about Hiram and did not know how to begin. I intuitively felt, though, that to take him into my confidence would be to gain a valuable ally.
“She is everything that a proper wife should be,” Martin said and frowned. “Just as my mother never complained when my father called her every crude name in the dictionary and beyond.” His jaw tightened, making his face look even more square than usual, and his gray eyes went dark. I could sense his temper, kept in strict check but always there.
“Martin,” my voice was gentle, “your father was very ill. I saw many instances at the Farm where people acted strangely because they could not help it. Your mother understood that, and so must you. And the poor man has been dead and buried these five years.”
Martin was silent for several minutes, turning the pages of the book of theology that he had carried into the room. He had a passion for difficult subjects; he loved anything intricate that required clear thinking, which was probably why he was so very good with money.
“Your stepfather is furious,” he finally said.
“My stepfather is frequently furious about one thing or another.” I put some reinforcing stitches into the junction of a side seam and tiny armscye. “I believe that is why he loves politics so much; he can work himself up into a passion and still stay within socially acceptable bounds.”
I noticed that, now I was almost back in society, my manner of speaking had reacquired a certain edge that it never had at the Poor Farm. With sweet Tess and the godly Mrs. Lombardi, I had become a kinder person; I was not sure that I liked lapsing back into my former waspish self. I sighed and resolved inwardly to guard my speech.
“Martin.” I lifted my eyes from my sewing and met his storm-gray ones steadily. “I am so very grateful for the shelter you have given me. Let me rest here in peace f
or a few days, until the news of my departure has died down and my stepfather has stopped looking for me under every stone. I have many things that I would like to discuss with you before I decide on my next move.”
Martin smiled. “My dear Nell, you are welcome to stay for as long as you want. In truth, to have a young woman and a baby around the house is a revelation; I had not realized how delightful it would be to come home to company over the supper-table and a little one to dandle on my knee whenever the fancy takes me. You will quite persuade me to give up my bachelorhood.”
I smiled faintly and lowered my eyes to my sewing again. Martin might not find my presence quite so pleasant when he found out that I suspected my stepfather of “murder most foul” and was preparing to confront him with that knowledge. A most unwomanly plan indeed.
I let three weeks pass peacefully in the quiet comfort of Martin’s home. He was at his store from eight in the morning until six-thirty at night every day of the week except Sunday, and even on the Sabbath—he was not religious—he spent an hour or two working on his papers. So I plied my needle steadily as the days wore on, and Sarah spent a large portion of the day in Tabby’s doting care. The old woman spread three blankets on top of one another in her airy kitchen at the back of the house, and my daughter spent many happy hours there, laughing, rolling around, and playing with the various objects that Tabby found to amuse her.
I was surprised at how well Martin and I got on as adults. He said that it was because I had changed so much, which was perhaps not an entirely complimentary remark. Over the course of several days, I gradually told him the story of the Poor Farm, the discovery of the bodies of Jo and her baby, the death of Blackie, and the madness of Mr. Ostrander. When he heard what Mr. Ostrander had said about my stepfather, Martin’s brows drew together, and he looked so angry that I leaned forward impulsively and put a hand on his arm.
