The Daring Ladies of Lowell (11 page)

“Odious worm,” spat out Mrs. Holloway.

“They’re not going to dig a hole and throw her in. That’s not what’s going to happen, I won’t let it.” Even Mrs. Holloway paused at the ferocity of Alice’s declaration.

“Doctor, what else can you tell us?” Mary-o asked.

Benjamin Stanhope tugged at his collar, looking desperately uncomfortable. He shoved one hand into his pocket and pulled out a key. “This was in her pocket,” he said.

“For her storage case, I suspect,” said Mrs. Holloway, stepping forward and taking the key.

“She will not be tossed in a hole,” Alice repeated. Her resolve steadied her. She searched Stanhope’s face, trying to find an entry point; a weak spot. Something more, something that would make all this untrue.

“I must go,” he said. “Please do brace yourselves for a deluge of reporters and the like. People are upset. I understand one of the Fiske sons is coming to offer his family’s condolences. You certainly have mine.” He turned and pulled open the front door and exited, head hunched forward, heavily burdened by the sadness and pain he had introduced into the Boott Boardinghouse, number 52.

A
fter a bleak, barely touched dinner, Lovey’s roommates crowded together around Lovey’s bed. Mrs. Holloway got down on her hands and knees and pulled out a battered trunk, its leather straps worn thin; mute acknowledgment of the gypsy nature of Lovey’s life.

Alice knelt down next to her, inserted the key, and paused before turning it. The act felt intrusive, almost a violation. None of them had a right to paw through Lovey’s possessions. Alice wanted no such task, but she knew already, without the words fully formed, that Lovey’s privacy no longer existed. It would be as piteously exposed as her body must have been on the sheriff’s kitchen table. She turned the key, acknowledging also that she shared with the other girls something else: a reluctance to know.

The lid was heavy, the hinges rusty, protesting as Alice pushed it open. She peered inside.

There was very little there. A few trinkets, including a brooch with glittering green and yellow stones that Lovey had bought on their last trip into the Lowell store. “Who needs diamonds?” She had laughed, pinning it to her shirtwaist. “They’re so ostentatious. Isn’t that a wonderful word? I read it somewhere and just found out what it means.”

A Bible was tucked into a corner, the one from which Lovey had torn out pages, shocking more than a few of the girls in the mill. Next to it were the carefully stacked sheets of poetry that had adorned her loom. What else? A doll she had bought and tucked away as a surprise for Ellie’s birthday. Two shirtwaists. A bright purple off-the-shoulder dress with flared short sleeves that had horrified Mrs. Holloway when Lovey wore it to church. Not much more. There were no explanations here.

“What about that?” Mary-o said, pointing to a small bundle of tied papers tucked into a corner of the trunk. Alice reached down and pulled out the package, untying the string that held it together. In her hands were three pieces of paper, each containing a scrawled note—one on plain white paper and two more, written on yellow and on pink stationery. She peered into the trunk, seeing what the papers had hidden: a glass vial filled with liquid and wrapped in newsprint.

Alice opened one note and read it out loud. It was dated December 8.

I will be here on the 20th if pleasant at the place named at 6 o’clock. If not pleasant the next Monday eve. Say nothing.

“It’s unsigned,” Alice said. The others stared at her in silence as she opened the pink one, again a note about a planned meeting. And finally the yellow one:

No word to anyone. Bring the letters I sent to our meeting.

“It isn’t Lovey’s handwriting,” Alice said, showing the notes to the others. “Clearly she was meeting someone.”

Mrs. Holloway nodded. “There’s no other possible explanation,” she said.

Delia held up the glass vial, squinting at it. “It has a yellowish fluid in it,” she said. “Medicine, perhaps?” They looked at each other with uncertainty.

“We’ll get these to the sheriff in the morning,” Mrs. Holloway said.

As Alice prepared to close the trunk lid, she spied a scrap of paper caught under a bottom slat. A wrinkled piece, torn raggedly from a notebook. The carelessly scribbled words were instantly recognizable. No question, this was Lovey’s handwriting. For a strange second, she could almost see Lovey chewing on the end of her pencil as she wrote, the way she did when she copied poems or worked on her manifesto. She could see the pencil scrawling out her message, even feel the haste with which Lovey must have written it. She reached down and picked up the piece of paper, which lay crumpled and gray in the palm of her hand, and read it aloud.

If I should be missing enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol. He will know where I am.

Dec. 20th. SM Cornell

A memory flashed: the piece of paper Lovey had pulled from her pocket when she stood by Alice’s Boston-bound carriage.

“Who is the Reverend Avery?” Alice asked out loud.

The girls looked at one another, puzzled. Except for Mary-o, who turned pale and covered her face.

“Do you know who he is?” Alice asked.

Silence first. When she spoke, Mary-o’s voice was toneless, almost resigned. “Yes,” she said. Her eyes were watering. She stared at Alice across the sparsely filled, almost-forlorn trunk yawning open between them. There wasn’t a sound in the room. It was so still, Alice could hear the clattering of dinner dishes and pots being put away in the kitchen.

“Tell me.”

Mary-o’s chin was trembling. “I can’t tell you, I have to show you.”

“Well, then, show me.”

“You have to come somewhere with me. Tonight.”

Alice said nothing, just walked to the hook where her coat hung and took it down, pulling it on and buttoning up. “I’m ready,” she said.

T
hey trudged for at least half an hour on a rock-littered path, with Mary-o leading and saying very little. Alice followed, pushing away branches that hung over the path, wary after being slapped in the face by one of them. Their shared sadness clung to every step. Finally Alice spied a clearing ahead, a broad circular space surrounded by tall trees as straight and forbidding as sentinels. The air was sharp with the scent of smoking campfires.

They emerged from the trees and stood on a small embankment that gave Alice a full view of the clearing. There was activity everywhere, almost as if they had stumbled on some kind of village. Dozens of small shabby tents dotted the landscape, with women standing over washtubs in front of them, scrubbing clothes and shouting to small children. In the center of the clearing was a raised platform built of rough wood painted crudely in white. A stream of men and women was emerging from the tents and making its way toward the platform, some singing, some appearing to pray.

“This is the revivalist campground,” Alice said. It wasn’t a question.

Mary-o nodded. “Don’t move too much,” she cautioned. “We don’t want to be noticed.”

Alice caught sight of a man who was striding toward a raised platform, his back to them. He was tall and walked with the graceful, confident fluidity of a person who expects to be known and respected. His frame was broad and powerful as he moved with ease past the tents, patting a child’s head here, conversing with the women.

Curious, Alice turned to Mary-o to ask who he was. But her friend was focused on what was happening closer to the platform—which was clearly a stage. Alice could hear music, an instrument she could not place, until she realized it was a merging of voices, with no instrument at all. People gathering at the stage were swaying and chanting, arms overhead, at first gently, then louder and louder.

“What are they doing?” she asked Mary-o. They did not move from the edge of the clearing.

“Praying to be saved,” Mary-o said sadly. “I was with them before. But I felt foolish when I didn’t have any more money to give them. They didn’t seem to care about my salvation after that.”

“What have you brought me here to see?”

“Look,” Mary-o whispered urgently, grabbing her arm. “There he is.”

The man she had seen—clad now in a long white robe—had mounted the podium, moving gracefully, slowly raising his arms toward the sky. “Welcome, brothers and sisters,” he said in a rich, warm voice that carried through the clearing. “Come all ye sinful and sorrowful, come to Jesus.”

A wave of yearning sound rose from the crowd, a sound as full as that of a roaring wind. “Glory, glory!” shouted a husky man with scars on his face. His words were borne into the air, mixing, echoing with the other voices, producing a haunting refrain the likes of which Alice had never heard.

“Know this,” the man in white said. “God accepts all sinners, if your penitence is real. There will be no hell, no ocean of liquid burning brimstone, for those who confess and pray.” Murmurs through the crowd. “Come, prostrate yourselves before God,” he coaxed, beckoning. “Come, come. Don’t hold back.”

A woman walked forward, head bowed, arms folded across her chest. She threw herself to the ground; a man followed suit. Then another.

The preacher looked down at their prone figures. “God welcomes you,” he thundered. “Tonight brings you salvation.” He turned to the larger crowd and began clapping his hands. “Shall we salute these reformed sinners?” he cried. With a sharp pivot, he signaled to a band of assistants poised below the stage. They ran forward, each one holding a large bucket. With practiced speed, they began wending their way through the singing crowd.

Through it all, the soothing drumbeat of the preacher’s voice never stopped. “Support us, my friends, and know this—we are your pathway to God. Join us, and we will stand with each other through eternity.”

“Yes, yes!” came cries from the crowd as more people surged forward, tossing money now into the buckets. The clapping began again. With tears streaming down their faces, men and women continued to prostrate themselves before the stage. The man in white stepped down to walk in their midst, speaking all the while, soothing them with the rhythm of his deep and powerful voice.

“Do you see, do you understand?” Mary-o murmured. Her eyes were shining with tears, and she seemed to be forcing herself not to step forward.

“Lovey wasn’t part of this,” Alice said. Her own heart was pumping faster, caught in the manipulative emotion of the scene. That frightened her.

“I thought I could convert her at first. But she saw things so clearly. She didn’t mock and poke fun; she didn’t do that to me. But she stood here and watched it all. I remember, she said, ‘Who counts the money?’ And I found myself watching through her eyes.”

Riveted, Alice couldn’t look away.

“He’s coming this way.” Mary-o stepped back. “Don’t let him see you.”

Too late. The man in the white robe was moving through the crowd with contained grace, in no hurry, offering blessings as he went. He stopped suddenly and looked up, directly at them. As if he had known they were there all along. He stared at them through round, green-tinted glasses that magnified the size of his eyes. His lips—full and soft—curved into something of a smile, except it wasn’t quite a smile.

Alice found herself unable to move, held by the magnetic pull of his still, ordered face. She felt paralyzed for a moment. She thought of Lovey.

“Who is he?”

“The Reverend Ephraim Kingsbury Avery.” Mary-o said his name slowly, almost fearfully, drawing out each vowel. “And once I knelt before him, too. Once I felt transported.”

“Did you have reason to suspect—”

“She didn’t treat him with reverence, not like the rest of us. She didn’t pray. She liked the fact that he was smart. He noticed her.”

“Then what—”

“Remember that time she and I first came in late?”

Alice nodded, recalling the flushed, excited look on Lovey’s face when the two of them finally came home that night.

“I had gone to a final prayer session. Lovey said something about finding God in her own way. Jokingly—you know how she is.” Mary-o’s voice was shaky. “We were supposed to meet here, on this hill; she was so bold, she wanted to talk to him, face-to-face. To tease, to challenge? I never knew with Lovey. So I waited. It was a long time before she joined me. And she looked—you know, that reckless spark she would get in her eye; something had happened. I didn’t know what to think.”

Alice’s eyes were still locked on the preacher named Avery. She couldn’t let go. Then with one sudden, whipsaw movement that set his white robe swirling, he turned and strode away. Not with authority, as before. No, he looked like a man ready to run. Or perhaps that was wishful thinking.

I
t was close to midnight when she and Mary-o returned to the boardinghouse. Mrs. Holloway was waiting in silence for them; no reprimands. Mary-o said nothing, just headed into the dormitory. But Alice did not take off her coat, asking Mrs. Holloway for Lovey’s note.

“I have more questions for the doctor,” she said. “And they can’t wait.”

“No, it’s too late to go out again.”

“It’s important. I owe it to Lovey.”

A moment of hesitation before Mrs. Holloway sighed and turned away. “I’ll leave the latch off,” she said. “Please be careful.”

Alice half ran, half walked into town, a thin layer of ice crackling under her feet. When she reached Stanhope’s office, she pounded hard on the door. There was no answer. She leaned down, picked up chunks of ice, and threw them at the second-floor windows. He was there; she knew he was.

He opened the door, dry metal hinges complaining shrilly.

“My goodness, do you know the hour?” he said, blinking sleepily.

“I’m sorry, but I must talk to you.”

“Come in, Miss—”

“Barrow.”

“Yes, Miss Barrow?”

“I’ve found a note Lovey wrote.” She thrust it into his palms. “And three others in another hand, unsigned.”

He read, then stared at the floor. He locked his hands, flexing the fingers up and down, his face weary with more than age. In the silence, Alice could hear an unseen wall clock ticking steadily.