“Oh! And we must also be fair. I nearly forgot. Tomorrow when you come home, I want you to bring two more electric fans. Eileen needs one in her room, and Mrs. O’Rourke needs one for the kitchen. I want them to be happy and comfortable.”
“Don’t want to risk a strike in your own home, eh? I’ll get ’em. If we have any left, that is. They’ve been goin’ like beer at an Irish picnic, these hot days. Some cherry pie, darlin’?”
5
TWO RIOTERS KILLED
A Milk Train Is Demolished
—South Bend Tribune, July 6, 1894
As it happened, Patrick’s mother was the first person Hilda had a chance to ask, the next day, about Eugene Debs and the railroad incident. With Uncle Dan out of town, Patrick had had no chance to question him, and Aunt Molly, when Hilda telephoned her, was busy for several hours with one committee meeting after another. Hilda found herself forced to be patient, not one of her strong points.
Erik showed up before breakfast had been cleared away. “What did he tell you?” he demanded, helping himself to a piece of toast and spreading it lavishly with strawberry jam.
“That is enough, Erik.” Hilda moved the jam pot out of his reach. “Did Mama never teach you any manners?”
“Yes, but what did Andy say?”
Hilda sighed. “He could not tell me very much, only that he thinks this is a bad thing. He has heard men talking of it at the hotel, and he did not like the way they looked.”
“Ana—anti—?”
“No, not anarchists, at least he doesn’t think so. But he really knows very little. He is afraid, even, to be seen talking to me.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Oh, dear. Too late, Hilda saw the trap. “We are going to do nothing, little one. Mama would skin me alive if I led you into trouble.”
Erik hooted. “Where did you learn that one? From Patrick, I bet. And I’m not little. I’m fourteen. And I can take care of myself. So what are we going to do?”
“Nothing, I tell you! You will do nothing. And I do not know what to do until I learn more. Now go. Eileen needs to clear the table, and I must—must—” For the moment she could not come up with an excuse.
“Hah! You don’t got nothin’ you need to do. You’re just tryin’ to get rid of me.”
“Yes!” Exasperated, Hilda pushed her chair back and stood, with some difficulty. “I must think, and that I cannot do with you bothering me with your terrible English. Go and—and fish, or something.”
He went, grumbling, and Hilda sat down to think, a process which turned, inevitably, into a nap.
After lunch, she was reading once more through the stacks of newspapers for any item, however small, about unions and strikes, when Eileen walked into the parlor looking scared. “Mrs. Cavanaugh’s come to see you, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Cavanaugh? Patrick’s mother?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
The two exchanged glances. Eileen understood as well as Hilda that a visit from her mother-in-law boded no good.
“Herre Gud! Do I look as I should, Eileen? My hair—I do not have a good dress on—I was not—”
“You look fine, ma’am, and maybe you shouldn’t keep her waitin’ in the hall?”
“Oh! No! Please tell her to come in.”
Hilda didn’t even have time to arrange her skirts before Mrs. Cavanaugh marched into the room.
“Sit down, Hilda. It’s foolish you are to get up just for me, the condition you’re in.”
“Yes, ma’am—Mother Cavanaugh. I mean, no, I will sit. I mean—please to sit down.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh sat, ramrod-straight in the most uncomfortable chair in the room. “Are you feeling well?”
“I am well, thank you, but it is very hot. Oh! Would you like some lemonade, or—” Just at the moment, Hilda could not remember what other beverage might be appropriate to offer this woman, who was known to drink alcohol on occasion.
“No, thank you. It’s very hot, indeed. You must be uncomfortable.”
“I am well, thank you.”
They seemed to have come full circle. Hilda sat, mute, trying desperately to think of something to say, and wondering why Mrs. Cavanaugh had come. It was the second time she had been in the house. The first had been Hilda’s wedding day.
“Hilda, I—”
“Mother Cavanaugh, may I—”
Hilda choked on the words she had been about to utter. “I am sorry. Go ahead, please.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh sat up even straighter. “Hilda, I’ve learned from Mrs. Malloy that you’re gettin’ yourself mixed up again in skulduggery. I could hardly believe me ears. She said she encouraged you to it! Is this true?”
Hilda licked her dry lips. It was certainly very hot. “Yes, ma’am—Mother. She asked me to learn what I could about the train wrecks, because Mr. Malloy might have been killed if he had been on the train that was wrecked, and she thought I was good at learning things, and I needed something to do, and...” She ran down. Mrs. Cavanaugh looked furious.
“You have something to do! You have my grandchild to protect! In my day, women didn’t go gallivantin’ around when they were expectin’, and I’m amazed Mrs. Malloy would allow it, let alone put you up to it.”
Hilda’s temper was rising, and with it her courage. “I do not gallivant, Mrs. Cavanaugh. I have not left the house, and I will not. It is not proper, and it might not be good for the baby. But I can talk to people, and I can think, without doing any harm to our child.” She put the very slightest emphasis on the word. This baby did not belong to its grandmother! “Aunt Molly thought it would be good for me to have something to think about, and she was right.” Hilda had sense enough not to mention her own mother’s part in the plan. “I feel much better when I cannot yoost—just think about how hot it is. And since you are here, Mother Cavanaugh, there is a question I would like to ask you. Patrick says you will know the answer,” she added, lest Mrs. Cavanaugh refuse to talk to her.
“Hmph! A question about what?” Hilda thought she could detect a slight thaw in the older woman’s attitude.
“It is about Mr. Debs, Eugene Debs. Patrick says that when he was a boy—Patrick, I mean, not Mr. Debs—there was a railroad strike or something like that, and that Mr. Debs was part of it. He could not remember what it was all about, but he said you would know.”
“Oh. Well, yes, I do remember that. Hard not to, when it made such an uproar at the time.”
She stopped as Eileen, who was getting better and better at anticipating visitors’ needs, brought in a tray with glasses and a pitcher of iced tea, the fashionable drink made popular at the World’s Fair in St. Louis the year before. Hilda, nearly dead of heat and thirst, made herself offer the first glass to Mrs. Cavanaugh, who accepted with an almost civil nod.
“This is very refreshing, Hilda,” the older woman said condescendingly after a few sips.
Hilda smiled. “Thank you. You were telling me about Mr. Debs?”
“Oh, yes. The Great Pullman Strike. A terrible affair that was, all those men killed and hurt.”
As Hilda drank her tea and listened, her mother-in-law recounted the story, and a painful story it was.
The Pullman Palace Car Company, having lost income during the Panic of 1893, had drastically cut wages in their factory, but had not reduced rents for the houses in the “company town” of Pullman, Illinois. In the summer of 1894 (“and well I remember, for I was carryin’ Brenda at the time”) the Pullman workers walked out, and the strike escalated when members of a union headed by Eugene Debs began to boycott all trains pulling Pullman cars. Rail traffic west of Chicago was paralyzed; the Pullman factory production came to a halt.
Patrick’s father, alive then, had been a laborer at the Oliver factory in South Bend. Though they made plows and had nothing to do with the railroads, their products were shipped by rail, and the strike hurt them badly. Mr. Cavanaugh, along with the rest of the wor
k force, went on short hours, and the lost money was a hardship to the large family. “Mind you, we had some money put by. Mr. Cavanaugh was never a spendthrift. But there were already eight children to feed, and if it had been winter, I don’t know as we’d’ve had enough to eat.”
“But that is dreadful! With you expecting a baby, too. And you said people died?”
“That was when the soldiers came in, shootin’ folk left and right. That only made things worse, as anyone with as much sense as a spalpeen could have told ’em. By the time it was all over, the blessed saints only know how much harm’d been done, what with the dead and the maimed, the wages lost, and railroad lines all over the country tore up. And that Eugene Debs, he went to jail for it all.”
“But—but he has tried to become president. A man who has been in jail?”
“He wouldn’t be the first crooked politician in this country, would he now? Nor he wasn’t the only one to blame for the strike, neither. It was all of ’em, seems to me, from the company men right on up to President Cleveland. But that Debs—he’s a Socialist, you know. And that’s the next thing to an anarchist, and look what they get up to!”
Hilda knew a good deal about that. It had been nearly four years since McKinley’s assassination, and Hilda had been deeply enmeshed in an offshoot of that tragedy. She profoundly hoped that anarchists were not behind the present series of calamities, for her acquaintance with their methods still caused her the occasional nightmare.
“It is odd, Mother Cavanaugh,” she said thoughtfully. “A union is meant to help the workers, but so often a strike causes terrible things to happen to everyone.”
“Ah, well, that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? When the big bosses want to stomp on the poor folk, there’s goin’ to be explosions. And you listen to me, girl.” Her belligerent manner returned. “There’s already been explosions with this railroad business, and I don’t want my grandchild blown up in another one. So just you keep your nose out of it!”
Hilda gritted her teeth. “I promise I will not harm myself or the baby. Would you like some more tea?”
* * *
Well, that wasn’t as bad as it might have been, thought Hilda, waking after a short nap. Her mother-in-law hadn’t actually insulted her, and she had provided some useful information. Eugene Debs was a person of great interest. Connected with the railroads, a Socialist... Hilda got up from the couch, straightened her rumpled skirts, and went to the telephone in the hall. Before she picked up the handset, however, she had second thoughts.
She wanted, needed to talk to John Bolton, but a telephone call to Tippecanoe Place, however convenient, was not an appropriate way to reach him. The phone would either be answered by the butler, who would be incensed at being asked to call a servant to the instrument or, worse, answered by Mr. Studebaker himself, or his secretary. No, it wouldn’t do. She debated for a moment, then went to the desk in Patrick’s den, wrote a note, and rang the bell.
“Eileen, would you ask Mr. O’Rourke to take this note to John Bolton, please?”
“He’ll not be pleased at havin’ to take the horses out on such a hot day, ma’am,” said Eileen. “I could take it meself. I’m not very busy.”
There was a note of eagerness in the maid’s voice, and Hilda hesitated. John Bolton was a handsome man. He was also a man of doubtful probity where young women were concerned. Hilda, when she worked at Tippecanoe Place, had had to fend off his attentions more than once. But Eileen was scarcely more than a child, and she could surely come to no harm in a brief visit on a summer afternoon. “Very well. Do not hurry. It is too hot. But do not waste time, either, or Mrs. O’Rourke will be angry with both of us!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The clock had just chimed the half hour when Hilda heard the clatter of hooves on the brick pavement. A moment later, Eileen tapped on the parlor door. “Mr. Bolton, ma’am.” Her face was pink and her cap slightly askew. Hilda decided to attribute both to the heat of the day.
“Come in, John. Thank you for coming. Eileen, would you—”
But Eileen had vanished. Probably something cool would be forthcoming soon.
“Sit down, John. It is good to see you again.”
If Hilda had expected John to be somewhat abashed in her parlor, when her former milieu had been the servants’ hall, she was disappointed. He lounged back in her best chair and gave her an impudent grin, his head tilted to one side.
“Marriage agrees with you, Hilda, my dear. Oh, I beg your pardon—Mrs. Cavanaugh, it is now.”
“It is, yes. And I should call you Mr. Bolton.”
John grinned even more broadly. “As you wish. Eileen said you wanted to talk to me, and loath though I am to rush you, Mrs. George wants the carriage at five. So...”
“Yes. I need to know what you know about Eugene Debs.”
The grin faded. John sat forward. “Why do you want to know about him? He’s—he can be an unpredictable man. Sound principles, mind you, but he sometimes goes too far.”
“How far? That is what I want to know. Would he wreck a train?”
6
It is easier to be a lover than a husband...
—Honoré de Balzac, letter to a friend,1829
So that’s what this is about! I might have known you’d be poking into that affair. But is it wise for you—that is, just now?” Even John seemed slightly uncomfortable discussing her condition.
Hilda felt herself blushing. It was difficult, this transition from servant to lady. She and John had been friends, easy in one another’s company, though she had occasionally had to scold him for over-familiarity. Now...
She made a decision. “John, I am the same person I always was. You are the same person. Except when other people are around, I am Hilda. You are John. Yes, I am looking into the train wrecks, because Mama and Aunt Molly asked me to do it, but I cannot easily leave the house. So I must talk to other people and learn what I can. So. Do you think Mr. Debs could be organizing the wrecks?”
John sat back again, but his grin was gone. “Hilda, I don’t know. I don’t think he’d go so far.”
Patrick had said the same thing, Hilda remembered.
“He’s on the side of the railroad men, of course. He’s head of the ARU—American Railway Union.”
“But in that strike years ago—the Pullman Strike—railroad men were killed. That does not make sense.”
“Debs wasn’t in favor of that strike, from what I hear, or at least not of the boycott that caused most of the trouble. But the union men organized the boycott anyway, and Debs finally went along with it. It was when the army came in to break it up that the killing started.
“Look, Hilda.” John was very serious now. “These wrecks are different. They’re meant to kill people, and some of the ones who’ve died are train men, union men. I can’t believe Debs would be involved in something like that.”
“But he is a Socialist. Do not Socialists want to change the government, and do they not believe that violence is the way to change it?”
“Some of them,” admitted John. “But Debs is no anarchist. He just wants a better life for the working man. I still don’t think he would agree to wrecking trains.”
“But the men in his union—they do not always listen to him. You told me that.”
And John had to agree.
Eileen brought in some iced tea, and they spoke of other things. But as he was getting up to leave, Hilda said, “John, talk to people you know. See what they think about the wrecks. What you hear will be rumor, and guesswork, but in all of it there might be some truth.”
“I’ll do that, Hilda. And I’ll give you a report. Maybe it would be better if I sent you a note?”
Regretfully, Hilda agreed. Her social position was already precarious. Too many visits by John Bolton, and her reputation, too, would be in question.
Even if she was getting as big as a house.
* * *
Of course when Patrick came home he knew all about John’s visit
, and he was not pleased.
“What’s this I hear about that blasted coachman comin’ to call?” were his first words, after he had given Hilda a perfunctory kiss.
“How did you know?”
Hilda knew the moment the words were out of her mouth that they were not what she should have said.
“Tryin’ to keep it from me, were you? Now you listen here, me girl—”
“Patrick. You listen to me! Already today your mother has been here to scold me. I do not need a scolding from you, too. John may have some information that will be useful to me. We have agreed that he will not come here again, but—”
“He shouldn’t have come in the first place! I don’t know what’s got into you, Hilda. People think we don’t know our place, anyway, me but a fireman and you a maid. If you can’t behave like a lady—”
“It is your aunt who asked me to look into the train wrecks! I cannot do that without talking to people.”
“Well, they don’t have to be people like John Bolton!”
At that Hilda dissolved in tears and went upstairs to bed. Eileen snubbed Patrick all evening, and after he had poked at his dinner and tried to read, he stomped upstairs himself. Hilda, curled up on the far side of the bed, pretended to be asleep when he came into the room.
Muttering in the Gaelic he thought he’d forgotten, he turned out the light and went to bed.
* * *
Hilda did not come down to breakfast the next morning. It was Saturday, when Patrick did not always go to work, but with Uncle Dan out of town, someone needed to be there to keep an eye on things. Patrick read his newspaper, drank his coffee, and ate his toast quickly, waited on by a stony-faced Eileen. He had no appetite for a real breakfast. He was already repenting his hasty words to Hilda. They had never before had a serious quarrel. Oh, arguments, disagreements, yes—about almost everything, in fact—but those had been fun. This was different. He had been unfair, and he knew it, but he couldn’t make up with her if she was still asleep, could he? For sure, if she was of a mind to be friends again, she could have waked and said something.
Murder in Burnt Orange Page 4
