The Passionate and the Proud

by Vanessa Royall

  “All right,” said the doctor quietly, rising wearily to his feet. “Reverend, we must talk. In private. Who has been tending these children since the first case of grippe?”

  “Why, Miss Alden, sir.” The Reverend Bowerly indicated Emmalee with a gesture. “Is everything all right?”

  “No,” said Dr. Legatt. “Miss Alden, you come with us.”

  Puzzled and a little jittery, Emmalee followed the doctor and the reverend through the dormitory and outside into the cold vestibule. They stood close to one another. Three frosty clouds rose in puffs as they exhaled.

  “What is it, Doctor?” Bowerly asked. “What’s going on here?”

  Dr. Legatt stared intently at Emmalee, pulling on his great mustache. Then he faced the Reverend Bowerly.

  “It’s smallpox, Reverend. I hate to say it, but that’s what it is, and it looks as if you’re on your way to having a horrible outbreak here. You’ve seen those splotches on the faces of some of the children? By tomorrow those sores will be open and suppurating. Beware the pus, it’s deadly. You’re going to need—”

  “But what about Tessie?” cried Emmalee. “What about Peter Weller?”

  Dr. Legatt’s voice was gentle, soothing. But his words were blunt.

  “The strong will survive,” he said. “Some will be scarred for life, some not, depending upon how severely they are stricken. But”—he lifted his strong, well-cared-for hands and let them fall—“many will die. It’s in God’s hands now. There’s little medicine can do. As I was about to say, you’re going to need help. I’ll contact people in town who’ve survived the disease. Some of them will help you out, I’m sure. Of course, they’ll have to live here. The orphanage will have to be quarantined until late spring, at least.”

  “Dear lord,” the reverend said. “And what about Emmalee? She’s been in close contact with the sick children for almost a week now, isn’t that right?”

  Emmalee nodded her corroboration. One of the doctor’s phrases kept running through her mind: The strong will survive, the strong will survive, the strong will survive…

  “Ever have smallpox, Emmalee?” demanded Dr. Legatt, scowling at her. He saw her peerless, fair winter-tinted skin, ruddy in the cheeks, her face framed by thick, dark-blond hair that was like ancient gold. He held her violet eyes with his gaze, expecting the truth.

  “I—I think I had it…when I was a child,” Emmalee told him. “That’s what my mother told me. But it was a mild case.”

  “It certainly was. If you had it at all. There’s not a mark on you. By the way, how old are you?”

  “Sixteen in April.”

  The doctor’s eyes widened. “Forgive my surprise,” he said. “You look at least twenty. Forgive me, again. We gruff old doctors lose our manners faster than…but I assumed you were an employee here? A nurse or teacher, perhaps?”

  “No,” Superintendent Bowerly corrected, “Emmalee is one of our charges. She looks and acts more mature than her years suggest, and thank God for that. She’s been a tremendous help to us.”

  Dr. Legatt shrugged resignedly. “Well, she’ll have to be quarantined like all the rest,” he said. “You haven’t had any contact with individuals outside the home recently, have you?” he asked Emmalee.

  Instantly Emmalee’s eyes met the Reverend Bowerly’s, and in shocked unison they pronounced the name.

  “Val Jannings!”

  The Lutheran orphanage was situated on the crest of a wooded, gently sloping hill that rose on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. Chapel, stables, sheds, and dormitories sparkled white in the April sunshine, white against the green of new grass, and the even brighter green of budding trees and bushes. Emmalee took from the orphanage’s pantry half a loaf of bread, a chunk of salami, and a small stone jug full of cow’s milk, and went out onto the lawn to celebrate her sixteenth birthday. For distraction, she brought along a copy of the Cairo Bulletin, freshly printed and dated April 12, 1868.

  Emmalee celebrated alone. She had toiled and prayed through the long months of winter, had cared for the stricken from long before dawn until past midnight, until she fell into fretful, exhausted sleep. But to little avail. She picnicked alone because she walked now like a living ghost in a lost house emptied of blood and brood. Tessie was dead, and Peter Weller. Louise Bunyon and the Reverend Bowerly were gone. Dozens of others, dead too, were resting down there in the grove of trees below the hill, where the new white crosses stood, mutely admonishing Emmalee for the temerity of having survived.

  Val Jannings did not lie beneath one of those small, neatly carpentered pine crosses. His family had afforded him a mausoleum in the fashionable cemetery outside Cairo, with a big stone angel guarding the door. Emmalee had been asked not to attend Val’s funeral, but she had visited the mausoleum. The Jannings family blamed Emmalee for having transmitted smallpox to Val. It did not matter that she had suffered and acquired immunity to the disease at an early age. Nor did they wish to hear with what selflessness she had cared for the afflicted during the winter nights. She was the cause of Val’s death; that was the only way they could see it.

  Heavyhearted with this knowledge, Emmalee walked out and sat down on the lawn, wondering what to do. Today, according to the laws of the country, she was a woman. Today, according to the rules by which the Lutheran home was governed, she was free—indeed, she was admonished—to go out and find her way in the world.

  That world lay bright and shining across the sparkling Mississippi. Sidewheelers and sternwheelers plied the ceaseless thoroughfare, and barges laden with all manner of men and goods fought their way upstream or drifted with the current. Across the river, as far as Emmalee could see, were the green hills of Missouri. And beyond them was the great west, always a part of Emmalee’s dreams, but which, for months, she had been too troubled to contemplate. Even today, on her birthday, she felt too disspirited to think about the future very much.

  Fighting a sorrow she could do nothing to dispel, Emmalee lay down on the sun-warmed grass and closed her eyes. Flickering patterns of light, red and blue and amber, burst and reburst and danced behind her eyelids. Old earth held and cradled her. The sun was warm and loving, bathing her strong, young body in its gentle glow. She heard, down on the river, the calls of pilots and boatmen, the lowing of cattle transported to market on the barges, and the constant splash and slosh of the big paddlewheels. She smelled the coalsmoke of the steam engines that drove the paddlewheels.

  My life is marked by graves, she thought.

  But self-pity made her angry with herself. Emmalee sat up, bit into the strongly spiced salami, ate a chunk of bread, and took long swallows of the stone-cooled milk. Then, squinting against the sun, she began to scan the Cairo Bulletin. The rest of the world was teeming and fighting and scheming, getting on with life.

  President Andrew Johnson, reeling from the twin burdens of incompetence and impeachment, stood no chance of reelection. General Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the triumphant Union army, would save the nation again, this time from the White House.

  The new transcontinental railroad would revolutionize America, would bind the farflung seaboards even more effectively than the telegraph had advanced communication. All manner of immigrants had worked on the railroad, even Chinese. Emmalee had never seen any Chinese, nor any of the far places mentioned in the news.

  The old spirit of her wanderlust rose again inside her. That same powerful yet obscure drive that had caused her parents to leave their comfortable little farm in the Pennsylvania hills was her heritage, and she felt it surge in her soul again as she gazed westward across the Mississippi.

  She turned the page of the newspaper and found herself staring at dozens of advertisements for travel to the west.

  SOUTHWESTERN COMPANY FOR CALIFORNIA

  The company is putting out a train of good wagons, for the purpose of carrying passengers to central California. We will take a man through for $150, starting from Kansas City on the 12 of May, 1868…

  Emmalee felt a
small thrill. There was certainly no place farther west than California, at least none to which she could aspire, and there was time to get to Kansas City in a month. But then she read the notice again, with its inevitable and depressing particular: the trip would cost $150 per man or, presumably, per woman. She had perhaps ten dollars to her name, painstakingly saved from the small allowance the Reverend Bowerly had given the older children. But, as yet undaunted, she read on.

  OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Territorial offices hereby inform all interested citizens of a land rush to be held in the Territory of Olympia, beyond the Rocky Mountains, on October 1, 1868. All able-bodied citizens who have reached majority may lay claim to no more than one hundred sixty acres of land per family. Prospective claimants must register their intent to claim land with U.S. agent Vestor Tell in the town of Arcady, Territory of Olympia, on or before commencement of the land rush.

  Land! Emmalee studied the announcement carefully. She had always loved to study geography and received something like a physical thrill from the examination of maps. They spoke of distant places, always more exciting than wherever she happened to be. And she had read of land rushes as well. Horses and wagons and people lined up as in a race, and at the sound of a starter’s pistol shot, they went out to claim the best land they could find. Land rushes were a device to attract settlers to distant regions, and from what Emmalee had been able to learn, they were very successful in accomplishing that goal.

  But how on earth was she going to get beyond the Rocky Mountains by October? Another advertisement caught her eye.

  HO FOR OLYMPIA OVER THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS

  Mr. Burt Pennington is now preparing an outfit for passage to Olympia starting the 1st of May. Those with an interest in ranching cattle are sought. Experienced guides will be with the company. All possible care will be taken of persons sick on the trip, and proper medicines kept in readiness. Persons wishing passage should contact Mr. Burt Pennington at the Schuyler Hotel on Market Street in St. Joseph.

  Emmalee scanned the notice a second time, feeling a small surge of hope. Pennington must be a gentleman. None of the other notices, she saw after further examination, mentioned medicine, but all of them mentioned money. The cheapest fare listed was $120 per person, but that applied only if the passanger brought along his own horse, mule, or ox, none of which Emmalee owned or had any immediate prospect of owning. But perhaps she might strike some sort of arrangement with this Mr. Pennington. At any rate, all the wagon trains seemed to be leaving from Kansas City or St. Joe.

  She began to think seriously about leaving the home and making her way to St. Joe. The town lay in the northwestern part of Missouri, over three hundred miles as the crow flew. Emmalee had desire, strong legs, a young body, and ten dollars. Would they be a match for three hundred miles of Missouri?

  Emmalee pondered this, doubtful one moment, confident the next. Then little Sarah Shedd came running toward her across the lawn. Sarah was all of seven. She had survived the smallpox, one of the twenty-three orphans fortunate enough to have done so, but the malady had pocked her poor little face for life.

  “Em, Em!” she cried, racing toward the older girl. “Preacher Task wants to talk to everybody right now. Hurry up or you’ll be late.”

  Preacher Task had been appointed the home’s new superintendent and had arrived only this morning to take up his responsibilities. Emmalee had not yet seen him, but she hoped he would turn out to be as good and dedicated as the Reverend Bowerly had been, even though she had no intention of remaining at the orphanage. She got up, folded the newspaper, picked up the remains of her lunch, and accompanied Sarah to the chapel.

  Most of the children, with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, had already taken their seats in the chapel pews, and Preacher Task was standing in front of the altar when Emmalee entered with the little girl. In appearance and demeanor, Preacher Task stood in stark contrast to the late Reverend Bowerly. He was tall, thin, and brittle-looking, as if his whole body were nothing more than a collection of stiff joints. His face was long, thin, and pale. He appeared to be a man who had known little pleasure or comfort in life, but Emmalee could not tell if that had been the result of self-denial or bad luck.

  “Let me tell you about myself,” Preacher Task said then, beginning his presentation, “and tell you, likewise, what I shall expect of each and every one of you during my tenure as your superintendent…”

  He proceeded to tell the children how he had found Christ and was reborn, after which he enumerated a dizzying list of rules and restrictions. Emmalee watched the little faces fall into boredom and gloom. The Reverend Bowerly, at least, had believed that children ought to have a little fun. The home was obviously going to be rather dour from now on.

  “You may now go to your chores and your studies,” Preacher Task concluded, dismissing them. “But I should like to see Emmalee Alden forthwith.”

  The children filed out of the chapel and Emmalee approached the altar.

  “You are Miss Alden?” asked the preacher, gazing at her with some surprise.

  “That’s right.”

  “I had…I guess I had expected a more teacherly sort of girl, from what I’ve been told of the help you’ve given the home…”

  His voice trailed off as he studied Emmalee, radiant in the prime of young womanhood. Her thick, darkly golden hair fell softly to her shoulders, framing an astonishingly striking face with high, widely spaced cheekbones. Her eyes, also widely set, were violet in color and intelligently watchful, full of spirit and curiosity. They seemed to look through the preacher to distant places. Her mouth was straight and firm, a woman’s mouth with full, gentle lips. Her nose was small and straight; her chin slightly rounded. The shape of her high breasts pressed against a calico dress, as did the perfect swell of her hips. She had a strong body, the preacher noted, and she was at least five and a half feet tall.

  Preacher Task was a bit nonplussed; Emmalee did not look like any teacher he had seen before.

  “Come with me,” he said. “We shall go to my office.”

  Wordlessly, Emmalee followed him across the orphanage grounds. She judged him to be a serious, well-intentioned man, but his personality seemed devoid of spark or fire. So vibrantly alive herself, so responsive to others who shared her spirit, Emmalee felt vaguely sorry for the preacher.

  “Sit down, Miss Alden,” he told her when they were inside his office. “I want to discuss your responsibilities with you. I am, you see, placing you in charge of the children’s studies and discipline—”

  “But, sir, I am leaving the home. Today is my sixteenth birthday, and—”

  “It is?” asked Task, looking perplexed. “No one told me about that. I was counting on you to—”

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve already made my plans.”

  That was not entirely true, of course. Emmalee’s plans were still indefinite. But she saw that Preacher Task was a stubborn man and that he did not take kindly to the possibility of his own plans being thwarted.

  “I must sign the papers that approve your leaving,” he pointed out.

  “That is true, but I am sixteen now and free to leave.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed as he considered this.

  “How do you know you’re sixteen?” he asked. “Do you have proof?”

  “I was born on April 12, 1852, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s not proof, is it? Now, if you had a written record of birth from your home parish, or a certificate of baptism, perhaps? You are free, of course, to write for one…”

  Emmalee thought of the time that such an exercise would require. She considered too the wagon trains that were now being outfitted to leave St. Joe.

  “And where would you go if you left here?” Preacher Task was asking, a grave, concerned expression on his long face.

  “There’s going to be a land rush in Olympia,” she answered enthusiastically. “I’m going out there and see if I can stake
a claim. That’s what my folks planned to do and—”

  “Come now, my dear,” he interrupted gently. “We must all aim high, mustn’t we? But aren’t you being just a tad unrealistic? I can see that you’re a strong, ambitious young woman, but you’ll have to cross the Great Plains with a wagon train, you’ll be in the company of adventurers and charlatans and perhaps even thieves. I’d advise against it.”

  Emmalee fumed. What was wrong with being in the company of adventurers? She looked forward to it. But she held her tongue. Preacher Task was obviously not a man who readily countenanced contradiction. She decided to keep her own counsel and make her own plans. She was going to leave the home, no matter how he felt about it, no matter what he said.

  “Let us wait until you have your proof of age,” he told her. “Then I’ll help you make a reasonable arrangement for the future.”

  Emmalee spent the afternoon mapping strategy. Since she would have to be present for supper, she would not be able to leave until it was almost dark. With neither doubts nor second thoughts, but with a bit of trepidation, she saw herself trudging along a nighttime roadway, maybe catching a few hours of sleep beneath trees. She could not risk asking for shelter in a home anywhere near Cairo, on the chance that Preacher Task would notice her absence and send out some sort of alarm. And she certainly could not spend any of her pathetic little treasury except in a case of dire emergency.

  Then, as she was folding and packing her few worn dresses and her pretty white Sunday-go-to-meetin’ dress in the portmanteau Val Jannings had given her for Christmas, Emmalee suddenly thought of a new plan, so obvious that she was amazed it had not occurred to her before.

  First she visited the storeroom, where the clothing, toys, and trinkets that had belonged to the children who’d died during the winter were kept. Then, taking thread and needle from her little sewing kit, she sat down on her bunk and set to work. By suppertime Emmalee had completed her task and had hidden her portmanteau in the hayloft above the stable.