Betina Krahn (19 page)

“Yeah … to throw at her when she come out of the butcher’s,” Dipper charged with no little indignation.

“Well, he didn’t hit ’er,” Shorty said. “She didn’t need to get all huffy.”

“It wasn’t right—him leavin’ her with the shopping and runnin’ off,” Dipper declared. “He was supposed to help.”

“He did help.”

“Did not,” Dipper countered. “You an’ me an’ Miss Priscilla carried most of it back ourselves.”

“Well, his boot was hurtin’ him. Got a right big old blister—saw it meself.”

“It wouldn’t have been hurtin’ him if he hadn’t been runnin’—”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Beatrice said. “I believe I have the gist of it.”

She watched them heading for the kitchen, arguing about who should have listened to whom, and saw in their quarrel a reflection of her niece’s straining relationship with Jeffrey. Clearly, things were moving along.

“She might need a sympathetic ear,” Alice suggested.

“Just what I was thinking. I believe the rest of these can wait until tomorrow.” She set her papers aside and headed for the stairs.

The sound of muffled sobs stopped her outside Priscilla’s door. The worry that was never far from her mind returned with a vengeance. What lesson was Priscilla truly learning from all of this? What if the work and the world she had been plunged into were too harsh? It struck Beatrice that her niece would need help in order to draw useful insights from the experience, and there was no one to provide it but her.

A shaft of light from the hallway cut through the darkened room, illuminating Priscilla’s lace-draped four-poster. She was lying facedown across the bed, still dressed in her ruined blouse and skirt, crying her heart out.

Beatrice steeled herself against a massive wave of guilt and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“What do you want?” Priscilla’s voice was muffled by bedclothes.

“To see how you’re doing,” Beatrice said.

“Fine—I’m just
fine
.”

“You don’t look fine, Priscilla. Sit up and let’s talk.”

After a minute, Priscilla pushed up from the bed and gave her damp face a swipe with each hand. “I guess you’re happy now … ruining my life … making me miserable,” she said in the grip of anguish, “like you.”

“You think I want you to be miserable?”

“Misery loves company, doesn’t it?” Priscilla’s eyes glittered with tears.

“I am not miserable, Priscilla. On the contrary, I am quite content with my life.”

“Then why are you always so angry?” Priscilla heaved a settling breath. “You’re always saying that life isn’t fair and talking about how things are so terrible for women. You’re always going to meetings about how men are so vile and awful.”

“Is that what you really think? That I believe men are vile and awful?”

“You hate men. Everybody knows it, even Alice. That’s why you can’t stand that Jeffrey and I are in love. Just because you had a rotten old man for a husband doesn’t mean all men are bad.”

The picture Priscilla painted was neither flattering nor fair, but it was brutally accurate as a picture of how her niece saw her. How had they grown so far apart in recent years? When Priscilla first came to her, at age nine, they spent many happy days together and enjoyed each other’s company. Each understood full well that the other was the only real family she had.

“I don’t believe all men are loathsome, Priscilla, especially not my late husband, Mercer. He was a good man.
Too old for me, true, and not much of a romantic, but he was honest and trustworthy. He tutored me in business and finance and made me the businesswoman I am today. I will always be grateful to him.”

“But you didn’t love him, did you?” Priscilla said in accusatory tones.

“That’s a complicated question that requires a very complicated answer.” She felt a jumble of emotions rising and suppressed them. “I cared for him a great deal.”

“But he didn’t make your heart pound, or make you melt all over with just a smile, or make the sun shine brighter just by being near you, did he?”

The hurt and anger in the question stung Beatrice. “No, he didn’t.”

“Then you’ve never been in love. You don’t know what it’s like.”

Oh, but I do,
was on the tip of Beatrice’s tongue before she stopped it. It astonished her that in the last week she had indeed experienced that heart-racing, melting-all-over, the-world-is-a-brighter-place sort of feeling. And it further astonished her that—enthralling as it was—she knew that it had precious little to do with real love.

“I won’t debate my life or my experience with you, Priscilla. My point, in requiring you to work at Wood-hull, is that you have a lot to learn about life.”

“Oh? And how is boiling up gallons of gruel and haggling with dirty old men at the market going to teach me anything?” Priscilla demanded.

Beatrice studied her niece’s resentment and resistance.

“How many of the Woodhull residents have you met?” she asked.

Priscilla scowled. “I don’t know … maybe four or five … the ones who work in the kitchen.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Why?” Priscilla’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m curious. Aren’t
you
curious about the people you work with?”

She drew a long-suffering breath, as if resigning herself to the fact that she was in for another
lesson.
“Nora’s the head cook … Estelle is her assistant … Mary Alice just came there and got assigned to the kitchen, like me. There’s Tad, he does scullery work … he’s twelve. And there’s Rita … she’s in a family way. She gets sick every morning … you can hear her … it’s disgusting.” She made a face.

“Do you know much about them?”

Priscilla gave her a resentful look from the corner of her eye. “I know Nora bellows and Estelle gossips and I think Mary Alice has a husband somewhere out West looking for gold. Rita’s not married and she’s scared they’ll turn her out onto the streets. And Tad’s mother died two years ago at Woodhull and they let him stay on, instead of sending him off to an orphanage.”

“Is that all?” Beatrice asked.

“Isn’t that enough?” Priscilla averted her gaze.

Beatrice sighed quietly.

“I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow, I’ll be showing some gentlemen around the Woodhull House. I’d like you to come with us and see more of what goes on there … meet a few more of the people.”

Priscilla straightened. “But I have to work in the kitchen again tomorrow.”

“I don’t think they would mind if you were gone for an hour or two in the afternoon. I’ll talk to Ardis
Gerhardt tomorrow morning and arrange it. What do you say?”

Priscilla curled one side of her nose. “If it gets me out of that stinky kitchen for a few hours, I say
yes.
”

THAT SAME EVENING,
in the oak-paneled smoking room of the exclusive Pantheon Club, Harry Winthrop and Archibald Lynch were lighting up expensive cigars with three more of the nine members of Consolidated’s board of directors. One after another, the directors blew out long streams of pungent smoke and settled back into their deep leather chairs. As generally happened, the conversation came around to business and to the latest stock tips and investment opportunities.

“Jaeger, at the German Savings Bank, put me on to some sweet little opportunities the other day,” Lynch intoned, pausing to collect the attention of the three board members. “He says that American Telephone and Telegraph is set to expand fast. A couple of German fellows back in the homeland—Daimler and Benz—have invented a new engine that burns petroleum of some sort. Another horseless carriage, but it’s worth looking into. And there’s a factory on the Lower East Side called Flegler and Fain that’s going on the block.”

“Flegler and Fain? Never heard of it,” one of the directors declared.

“Profitable little place—sturdy building, plenty of cheap labor,” Winthrop informed the group. “They make hooks, grommets, and those new zip-cross fasteners. Supposed to be the coming thing for clothes. I checked it out.”

“And?” Another director sat forward, clearly interested.

“The place is ripe for the taking. They’re cash starved. They’ve got to have capital to expand and start production of the new fasteners.”

“Sounds interesting. But there must be a hitch.” The third director, who had intercepted an exchange of glances between Lynch and Winthrop, put his goblet down with a huff of disgust. “There’s always a hitch these days.”

Lynch studied the three board members. “There might be some resistance at Consolidated.”

“From the president, no doubt,” the board member responded. “And what would cause her to object to such a plum? She likes a profit well enough.”

“That cheap labor?” Winthrop said. “It’s women and kids.”

There was a general groan and the others reached for their glasses and sat back.

“That again,” one of the directors said, downing his drink and setting his goblet down with a clang. “I’m damned sick and tired of passing up deals and losing money because something offends her female sensibilities. She’s got no business being in business if she hasn’t got the stomach for it.”

“Or the balls,” Lynch added slyly.

The laughter his comment produced had a purposeful edge.

“Maybe it’s time Consolidated Industries resigned from the bleeding heart society,” Winthrop declared. “Maybe it’s time our president moved on.”

“That won’t happen,” the third director declared, stubbing out his cigar in the nearest crystal ashtray. “You’re wasting your breath and our time.”

“What would you say if we told you we have the leverage we need to make her decide to ‘retire’ from office?”
Lynch said with a cryptic smile. “That we can virtually guarantee that after the board meeting, she won’t be a factor in the management of Consolidated Industries at all?”

The three directors looked at each other and came to the edges of their seats. “What have you got?”

Lynch glanced knowingly at Winthrop and his smile turned wicked as he turned it back to the others.

“
Dirt.
What else?”

CONNOR ARRIVED AT
Woodhull House the next morning looking rested and confident and abominably handsome … with reporters from three of the city’s major newspapers in tow. Beatrice was waiting in the front hall of the bustling settlement house, with Priscilla, candidate John Netherton, and Woodhull’s director, Ardis Gerhardt. The minute he stepped through the door, she found herself examining his charcoal gray coat, his pinstriped trousers with their precise crease, and his impeccable silk tie … feeling oddly irritated at his visible perfection. Pansy from the Oriental was right; it ought to be a law that men’s outsides and their insides had to match.

He looked up, caught her staring, and smiled. She turned her head and refused to look directly at him again.

The women staying at Woodhull House needed food and clothing as well as shelter, Ardis Gerhardt explained as she began the tour. Meeting the daily needs of nearly a hundred individuals required organization and the concerted effort of staff and residents. Each woman admitted to the house was assigned tasks on a rotating basis; cooking, cleaning, laundry, sewing, and child care.

They entered a large linen room lined floor to ceiling with shelves stocked with sheets and blankets and toweling. The director paused by the large, sunlit worktable in the middle of the room and spoke to a sallow-faced woman mending some donated linens.

“We have some visitors, Wynnie,” she said. “Would you mind telling them how long have you been here?” Wynnie thought for a moment.

“Two months now.”

“And how did you come to be here?” Beatrice asked.

“An angel come and plucked me out from under the bridge … me and my three kids.” She gave Beatrice a timid smile. “My husband, he had a barber shop over on Tenth Avenue. When he caught the consumption and died, that miserable landlord—he took the shop and all my man’s razors and shears and barberin’ tools for rent. Then we lost our place and lived on the street … until we got robbed. We had no place to go.” Tears appeared in her eyes and she blinked them back. “I’ll never forget the sight of them hot biscuits at supper that first night. My kids acted like they’d never seen ’em before—ate till they was sick. We had a safe, clean bed in a room to ourselves … it was pure heaven. Miz Gerhardt here … she’s our angel.”

Beatrice stood to one side, watching Connor’s face and taking a certain satisfaction in the uneasiness she glimpsed in it. Men should feel discomfort when faced with the inequities and deficits of the society they shaped and controlled for their own benefit.

As they continued the tour, Connor walked with his head bent and his hands clasped behind him, and she found herself wondering what he was thinking … besides how soon he could get away from this place. What would it take to convince him to be an advocate for
women, to really believe in the cause he was being coerced into supporting?

Their next stop was the kitchens, where they encountered Jeffrey … who glared at them from behind a massive pile of unpeeled potatoes.

“Well, well,” Connor said, strolling over to have a look at Jeffrey’s handiwork. “You’re a man of many talents, cousin.”

“Master Jeffrey, here … he’s learning,” Nora, the rotund head cook, declared with a broad smile as she placed a proprietary hand on the youth’s shoulder. “If we could just get him to quit flirtin’ with the girls …”

Jeffrey reddened from his collar up. “I—I …” He glanced at Priscilla, who looked stricken. “I’m just being friendly—I can’t help it that I’m friendly.”

Connor glanced at Priscilla, who was staring at Jeffrey, then at Beatrice. “Well, we all have our cross to bear.”

Nora chuckled and ushered them into the dining room, where she continued explaining their procedures: “We make three meals a day … feed two shifts at each meal. Not a woman goes through here that doesn’t take a turn at peelin’ and pluckin’ and kneadin’ …”

From there they visited the large sewing room where clothing pieces were laid out and being cut on large tables and treadle sewing machines were humming.

“Audrey is our head seamstress,” Ardis Gerhardt said, introducing a thin, sad-eyed woman with an air of faded gentility. “She came to us a few months ago with nothing but the clothes on her back. Since then, she’s set up this sewing room and sees to it that everyone here has proper clothes.” Ardis smiled at the woman, who returned a nod. “But, she’s about to leave us … to work for a
clothing manufacturer, where she will help design women’s ready-to-wear clothes. She’s one of our great successes.”