A Drowned Maiden's Hair (30 page)

On the fifth morning after the fire, Judith shook Maud awake and told her to dress for a journey by train. Her manner was hurried and secretive. Maud gathered that she meant to leave without speaking to Mrs. Lambert.

Maud began to put on her clothes. Half asleep though she was, she was tempted to wake Muffet to say good-bye. She considered arguing with Judith or refusing to budge, but she lacked the heart. She knew she would not win, and she was tired of everyone being angry with her. In a stupor of obedience, she brushed her hair and buttoned her boots. Judith nodded approval and took her hand.

Maud didn’t ask where they were going. Nor did she beg for mercy. She knew that a woman who had left her in a burning house would not scruple to take her back to the Barbary Asylum.

The walk to the train was a long one. The distance was not great — Maud could have walked it in fifteen minutes — but Judith limped painfully. It was the first day she had left her bed, and she grimaced every time her petticoats rasped against her burned leg. After a dozen steps, she pulled her veil over her face. Maud thought of offering her arm, as Lord Fauntleroy offered his to his gouty grandfather. Then she thought better of it. She knew that Judith hated herself for crying and would rather be left alone.

It was not until the train left the station that Judith spoke. She took out her handkerchief and wiped her cheeks. “Maud,” she said in an undertone, “do you think you could creep down and unbutton my boot? It’s very tight.”

Maud slid down to the floor. She crawled under Judith’s skirt, which smelled like charcoal, unbuttoned the boot, slid her hand up to Judith’s garter, and released the stocking. Judith flinched at her touch.

Maud slithered back into her seat. “I don’t think anyone saw.”

“Thank you,” whispered Judith.

Maud nodded. She was grateful even for ordinary courtesy.

“Maud,” ventured Judith some minutes later, “I have something to say to you. You know I’m taking you back to the Asylum, don’t you?”

Maud’s last hope died. “Yes.”

“It seems cruel to you, I suppose.”

Maud set her teeth and turned her head away.

Judith sighed deeply. In the past week, she had aged ten years. Her cheekbones looked sharper and her neck more wrinkled. Even her voice had lost its rasp; it was dull and weary. “Victoria was right all along. She said we had no business bringing a child into our world. The night of the fire —”

The words hung in the air. Judith couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. Maud wasn’t going to help her.

“Do you hate me?” Judith asked. She sounded as though she really wanted to know, as if Maud had the right to say yes.

Maud swallowed. “I don’t know. I hate Hyacinth.”

“You should.”

Maud fixed her eyes on the hot green world outside the window. The train was passing a cornfield that seemed to go on for miles: tall green cornstalks, hung with tassels. Maud could smell them. As if it were a thing of years gone by, she remembered how sweet the corn tasted, served with butter and salt. A week ago, she shucked corn with Muffet on the back porch. She remembered the sound it made when she ripped back the outer leaves and the way the sheathings turned from dull green to moonlit white. She liked to break a few kernels off with her thumb and eat them raw.

She was lost in the memory of shucking corn when Judith spoke again. “Maud, I am deeply ashamed.”

Maud raised her eyes, startled.

“I never wanted you.” Judith spoke the words dispassionately; she wasn’t trying to be unkind. “When Hyacinth first thought of adopting a child, I thought it was a mistake. I knew it would be a bother and an expense. But I meant to do my duty by you. I wanted you to have a decent home. I told myself that it might be wrong to teach a child the things we taught you, but you would have clothes and books —” She shook her head. “That’s all nonsense. It was horribly wrong. Our home was never decent.”

Maud began, “It was better than —” but Judith cut her off.

“It wasn’t,” she said flatly. “If the Barbary Asylum was on fire, someone would try to get the children out.”

Maud bent her head and crossed her arms over her chest. She wished Judith would shut up about the fire. It seemed to her that being left inside the burning parlor was proof of the thing she feared most: she was simply less valuable than other children. There was nothing Judith could say that would make her feel better. Unfortunately, Judith seemed to feel she owed Maud an explanation. She went on doggedly.

“When the lamp fell,” she continued, “I saw the fire catch my skirt. The flames fastened onto it like teeth.” She shuddered. “Eleanor Lambert grabbed the tablecloth and tried to smother them, but the tablecloth caught fire, too. Hyacinth was screaming. I thought I was about to die. That was all I could think of — the fact that I was going to die.”

Maud’s mind went back to her own journey, up the attic stairs.

“Afterward, once we were outside, I felt the — the burning. The pain. The doctor says it could have been much worse. The skin will heal in time but —” Judith stopped. “I didn’t think of anything but myself. That’s God’s own truth, Maud. I forgot all about you. I don’t know whether that makes it better or worse.”

Maud didn’t know either.

“Then the firemen came, and one of them asked if there was anyone else inside the house, and Hyacinth said ‘No one.’ That’s when I remembered you, and I fainted. I woke up in Mrs. Lambert’s carriage. Hyacinth was with me. She told me she was sure you would get out — that she would go behind the house and search for you.” Judith shook her head again. “I’m sorry, Maud. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

Maud dug her fists into her armpits. She felt she was expected to say something, but she didn’t know what it should be. She was grateful to Judith for trying to apologize, and she knew it would be generous to say she forgave her. Lord Fauntleroy would probably forgive her. The trouble was that she couldn’t say the words. Even though she understood what Judith was saying, the words wouldn’t come.

She sat without speaking while the train covered several more miles. Then she twisted to look into Judith’s face. “If only you wouldn’t take me back to the Asylum,” she begged, “if I could just stay with you and Aunt Victoria. Couldn’t I? Hyacinth’s gone away. Can’t I stay with you?”

Judith left no room for argument. “No.”

“Why not?” Maud’s voice rose to a wail. A man across the aisle turned to frown at them.

“Oh, Maud, there are so many reasons! For one thing, there’s Hyacinth. The house in Hawthorne Grove is hers — you know that — and she’ll never forgive you for telling —”

“I’ll never forgive her,” Maud said fiercely.

Judith shrugged. “Why should you? I wouldn’t. But you wouldn’t be safe under the same roof. She’d hurt you. She already has.”

Maud unclenched her fists and laid her hands in her lap. She knew that Judith was right. She wondered if Hyacinth had gone back to Hawthorne Grove. Somehow she didn’t think so. Hyacinth had been so excited about the rich ladies in Philadelphia. Probably she was with them.

“I guess you can’t pay the mortgage now. Will you — are you and Aunt Victoria going to have anywhere to live?”

Judith’s mouth worked. “We have a little money,” Judith said shortly. “Mrs. Lambert spoke to me last night. She — she offered us a small allowance.”

An allowance was money. “Why?”

“She said,” Judith reported, “that you told her about the mortgage. She said she understood we were desperate for money.” The rasp was back in her voice. “She said she was willing to provide us with the means to live respectably, as long as we stop having séances. If we continue as spiritualists, the allowance will be taken away. Otherwise she’ll give us enough to live.”

“But that’s nice,” Maud said. “Don’t you think that’s nice of her?”

“Nice!” hissed Judith. “It’s easy for her to be nice, with her money!
Noblesse oblige,
that’s how she thinks of it!”

“What’s no-bless bleege?”

“Noblesse oblige,”
repeated Judith bitterly. “It’s French. It means that Mrs. Lambert thinks she has to behave better than other people, because she has so much money.”

Maud didn’t know what was wrong with that, but she didn’t say so. She could see that Judith’s pride was in shreds. Judith had been born wealthy and respectable, a Hawthorne of Hawthorne Grove. Now she was forced to accept charity.

“What about Muffet?”

“Mrs. Lambert’s looking after Muffet. I suppose it’s just as well. Victoria and I can’t afford a servant who doesn’t do any work.”

“Muffet works,” Maud began indignantly, but Judith squelched her.

“With a fractured leg?”

“I forgot,” said Maud. She leaned back against the cushions and stared out the window once again. She felt a little better. After all, she had managed to convince Mrs. Lambert that Muffet was innocent. It was the only thing in the world she had done right. She had betrayed first Mrs. Lambert, and then Hyacinth, whom she had loved best of all — but she had been faithful to Muffet. Mrs. Lambert, Maud trusted, would take care of Muffet until she was back on her feet.
Noblesse oblige,
thought Maud, and she thanked her stars that Mrs. Lambert was nice.

The smell of the Barbary Asylum had not changed. In the past, Maud had not been aware of it; she had lived in the stench as a fish lives in water, without knowing it. Now she wrinkled her nose. Cabbage and bland boiled dinners, sour milk, mice, dirty diapers, mildew, wool uniforms that were never washed, sweaty little girls who washed far too seldom. Maud knew that in no time at all the smell would be part of her.

The Asylum’s ugliness was unchanged. The linoleum was still cracked; the rooms were still painted in flaking mustard, olive green, and a color that was referred to as “cream” but more closely resembled bile. The vivid chromos of biblical subjects were as flyspecked as before. The embroidered “Suffer the Little Children” was perhaps a little dustier. As for Miss Kitteridge, her mouth, always small, seemed to have grown smaller. The Superintendent’s lips were thinner and meaner than ever. It was a mouth that might have been designed for the sole purpose of whining.

Miss Kitteridge complained that it was a great disappointment to see Maud again. The Asylum was so overcrowded that any addition to the population was a burden, and, of course, Maud Flynn had never been what she might call an asset to the community. That was what the Superintendent said, but her lips twitched as if she were struggling to hold back a smile. That tiny half smile made Maud feel sick; she knew that Miss Kitteridge was savoring her disgrace.

“I believe I warned you,” Miss Kitteridge reminded Judith. “I told you the child was saucy and deceitful —”

Judith’s eyes strayed to the clock. “Miss Kitteridge —”

“Maud Flynn was the very last child I would have chosen for such a select home,” lamented Miss Kitteridge. “I said so at the time. It would have been better for everyone —”

Judith interrupted a second time. “Please be quiet.”

Judith was being rude toward Miss Kitteridge. Immensely cheered, Maud raised her head.

“The trouble with Maud Flynn,” announced Judith, “was not that she was deceitful, but that she was not deceitful enough. When all is said and done, she is fundamentally honest — and she has a heart. I am returning her, not because she failed us, but because we failed her.”

Maud’s hand stole into Judith’s. Miss Kitteridge’s face was a study. She was both enraged and baffled. Unable to think of a telling response, she sniffed. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, Miss Hawthorne.”

“I suppose not,” Judith replied. “It doesn’t seem to me that your intelligence is of a high order.”

Maud could have kissed her. But the time for parting had come; already Judith was letting go of her hand. “Good-bye, Maud Flynn,” Judith said formally. “You deserved better.”

Maud put one leg behind the other and curtsied with all the dignity she could muster. “Thank you,” she said. She realized that she was going to be able to get through the interview with her dignity intact. She kept her head up as Judith turned away. The old woman moved slowly, favoring her burned foot. Like Maud, she was holding on to her dignity.

Maud didn’t cry. She didn’t even blink.

Miss Kitteridge stood up. “Maud Flynn, you are to go to Ward Three and change into uniform. Put your dress in the clean laundry bin.”

Maud gave a single, staccato nod. “Yes, Miss Kitteridge.”

“Are you going to leave the room without thanking me?” demanded Miss Kitteridge. “Once again, your care is in our hands. Once again, this institution is bound to provide you with everything you need, from the food you eat to the clothes on your back.”

Maud had an inspiration. She lowered her lashes and tilted her head a little to one side. “Yes,” she murmured, in Hyacinth’s most maddening tones, “but such
frightful
clothes.”