Meg knew so little about Jasper. The few times she’d tried to question him, he hadn’t exactly been forthcoming. Still, without his letter to the asylum, Stephen would still be locked up, and that spoke volumes to his character, she was sure. Unless he’d done it to earn Sylvie’s affections.
Still ill at ease but unwilling to press the matter further, Meg thanked her and stood to leave. Spying a cardboard box in the corner of the room, she added, “You haven’t taken Hiram’s old clothes to the relief depot yet?”
“I meant to. But then I saw this.” Sylvie spun and reached into the box, withdrawing Hiram’s old uniform from the war. “Jasper doesn’t want it, or it wouldn’t be in the box. Since the historical society lost everything to the fire, I thought I could spiff this up and see if they’d like it. What do you think?” She handed the jacket to Meg.
Her fingers vaguely registered the scratch of wool. The buttons were in need of a shine, but the garment had aged well during the last ten years. “I think that’s a grand idea.”
She draped the uniform over the back of the chair and smoothed her fingertips along each section of fabric, checking for tears, stains, or spots where a mouse might have eaten through it.
Something crinkled in the trousers pocket. She pulled out an envelope addressed to Hiram. The return address was for Sarah Davenport in Indiana. Hiram’s sister.
Meg flipped over the envelope. Scrawled in Hiram’s hand, shakier than usual, were the words: Update will. Appoint Townsends beneficiaries.
Her heart lurched. Moving closer to the window to improve the light, she pulled out the letter and read.
Dear Hiram,
I know we have kept silent these many years. But I also know you would appreciate news of my grandson, your great-nephew, Jasper Davenport, whom I have raised as my own son since his parents passed away. You and he were close once, before our argument put an end to that. You wrote him many letters that I never did pass along to him, since you refused my request to cease contact. I was wrong not to let him read them. He would have liked hearing from you. I don’t suppose you’ll forgive me for a long while, if you ever do, but I ask it of you all the same.
As our president would say, Jasper gave the last full measure of his devotion to the cause. He died of typhoid fever in his army camp outside Petersburg, Virginia, in August. You should know . . .
Stunned, Meg looked at the date of the letter: October 18, 1864. It can’t be. She turned the letter over to find his sister’s signature, then flipped it again to reread the impossible words. Jasper died.
Shock jellied her knees. If Jasper was dead, then who was the man she had painted?
Sylvie frowned. “What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Sylvie stared at the letter and envelope Meg had spread across their humble kitchen table.
“I knew it,” Stephen mumbled. “I knew that man was up to something.”
Sylvie glanced at Meg and Nate, silently begging them to contradict him. To say that Stephen was only being paranoid and suspicious again. Her throat dry, she poured herself a tumbler of water and left the pitcher on the table. The cold was bracing to her senses, reminding her that this was no dream.
“He lied to all of us,” Meg agreed. “Poor Hiram! He didn’t remember his nephew had died. It happened too close to the end of the war. That was when his memory began to grow unreliable.”
Wind rattled the windows in the shanty, and the flames on the candles leaned away from the draft. “I—I don’t understand how this could have happened,” Sylvie stammered. All of them had been duped, but she was even more of a fool than the rest of them. She’d trusted him.
Oliver left the rug by the hearth and nudged Sylvie’s skirt. She lifted him to her lap, sinking her shaking fingers into his soft fur.
Stephen looked up. “You said he found the will declaring him the beneficiary? What was the date on it?”
“It was dated 1869. I remember that it was after Mother’s death,” Meg replied.
“If Hiram updated his will after the real Jasper’s death in 1864, what he showed you must have been a fake document,” Stephen said.
“It looked real to me.” Meg poured herself a glass of water too.
Nate folded his arms. “Forging it would not have been difficult for him. Assuming he really is a law student, he would have the template for the verbiage of a last will and testament.”
Meg shook her head and stretched her fingers back from her palms. Her complexion looked sallow in the glare of the kerosene lamp. “But who is this man we call Jasper, really?”
The bench scraped the floor as Stephen stood. He paced the room, tapping at his thigh.
Sylvie watched him, her unease increasing with his. “Are you all right?”
His grey eyes shone. Halting, he clenched his fists, then uncurled them, resuming his stiff-jointed gait. “Whoever that man is, he isn’t Jasper Davenport,” Stephen growled. “He’s a cunning deceiver, and dangerous.”
Sylvie’s hand went to the ache ballooning inside her. “Dangerous? No, surely not.” That haunting song about the wayfaring stranger . . . that was him. He was a stranger, without mother, father, or any other relation. “We may not know who he is, but he isn’t dangerous.” He wanted to be a better man. For her.
“You don’t know that,” Meg whispered.
“And you don’t know for sure that he is!” Oh, how desperate she sounded. Tears of shame and frustration rolled down her cheeks. “Wait.” She sniffed, possessing herself. “Perhaps Hiram’s sister was mistaken when she wrote of Jasper’s death. She could have been misinformed.”
Her father narrowed his eyes, and she felt his disapproval crawl over her skin. His nostrils flared, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “What power does that boy hold over you, that you should defend someone who has made fools of us all? Has he made promises to you, daughter, during those long weeks you shared a roof? Has he taken something—”
“No!” Groaning, she lowered her head to her hands, and Oliver fled her lap. “I assure you, he’s been nothing but honorable.”
“Honorable!” Stephen railed. “Will someone please explain to me the spell that man has cast over my youngest child?”
Meg raised her hands and patted the air in a gentling motion. “Easy, Father. None of us could have guessed anything like this.”
“I could have. I knew there was something awry, some devilment afoot. Pure devilment.” Stephen was slipping into a darker place.
“We can’t answer the how and why,” Nate said, “but we can discuss what we do next.”
Sylvie folded her handkerchief in her lap. “We can ask him to explain it himself.”
Stephen rounded on them, stomping over to the table and pointing a finger at Meg and Sylvie. “Under no circumstances, absolutely none, are either of you to be in that imposter’s presence ever again. Whatever fancies you’ve been nursing about this boy, it’s time you put them to a swift end.”
Sylvie closed her eyes and saw Jasper’s face. She saw his portrait hanging in the library. Then she saw him as he appeared in the carte de visite, still tucked inside the novel she’d borrowed from Hiram’s library.
Her eyes popped open. “She was wrong!” she gasped. “Sarah Davenport was wrong, and I can prove it.”
With a flurry, she swung her legs over the bench and hurried to the back room, where she found Villette and pulled the image from inside. Her heart pounded with relief and joy.
Hastening back to the kitchen, she slapped the card on the table. “Read the back. It’s Jasper, identified by Hiram’s own hand. He says it was taken in March of 1865. So he couldn’t have died in 1864!”
Stephen’s brows plunged as he studied the photograph. “What do you make of that?” He passed it to Nate, who looked at it with Meg.
“That’s him,” Meg confirmed. “I’ve spent hours studying the contours of his face. He’s much thinner here, but the structure of his skull is the same, as is that scar. That’s Jasper.”
&n
bsp; Nate took off his spectacles and closely examined the script on the backs of the envelope and the carte de visite. “The writing is the same too. So which version of Hiram do we believe? The one who tells himself to update his will, or the one who tells us the identity of his great-nephew is just as we thought?”
Sylvie clasped her cold hands together. “Photographs don’t lie. That’s the version we believe. Either Hiram’s sister received a false report, or she deliberately lied to Hiram to make him believe Jasper was dead. They were in a feud, weren’t they? Hiram had been writing to Jasper against his sister’s wishes. This would have been a way for her to sever the relationship once and for all. He’d have no way of knowing if Jasper was really still alive.”
“That . . . makes sense,” Meg said slowly.
When no one else agreed aloud, Sylvie rushed to fill the silence. “It’s the only explanation that solves this riddle.”
Stephen shook his head. “I’m not ready to trust him so easily. Something isn’t right about this. Why does Hiram date the photo so late in the war? Mine was taken as soon as I enlisted, and I left it with my family. Jasper told us he joined up in 1861.”
A gust of wind sliced through a gap between the window and its frame. Nate pulled an old newspaper from his satchel, folded a page into a narrow strip, and wedged it into the crack.
“I wondered the same thing, Father,” Sylvie said. “But maybe there wasn’t a photography studio at the camp where he did his training. And his family was poor. I imagine he thought it a waste of money that could be better spent on other things. Maybe his grandmother Sarah begged for a likeness to remember him by, and he finally gave in. It’s not all that difficult to imagine, is it? Just because his experience doesn’t mirror yours, doesn’t make it less valid.”
Stephen rose and stood before her. “Do you trust him more than you trust your own father?”
For a moment, she faltered at his question. “No, Father. I trust you too.”
“Then do not speak to him again. Do not spend time in his company. There is devilment afoot yet.”
Chapter Thirty-One
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1871
The temperature hovered a few degrees above freezing, with no rain in sight, which was a blessed relief. Mrs. Palmer’s Spirit of Chicago Art Show fundraiser was scheduled for the evening of Sunday, December 17, ten weeks to the day after the Great Fire. Days like today made the stress at home fade into the background as Meg willingly lost herself in her work.
Sunbeams broke through the clouds, a symbolic background of hope for a banker surveying the skeleton of his old building, which laborers were bringing down today. He’d worn a black suit, a top hat, and leaned on a cane, making him a stark figure. This time, she painted the subject from behind and placed him to one side so she could see what he saw. His posture in the presence of destruction captured the quality she was aiming for. He was unbowed, unbroken, even as construction crews knocked down the scorched arches and columns of his former bank.
They’d had to stay a safe distance away from the site, which was just as well, because Meg wanted to include as much of the scene on the canvas as possible. The banker stood a few yards in front of her, leaning on his cane. She could hear him reciting Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life.”
“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”
His voice warbled at first, but grew strong by the end. Victorious, even. It was beautiful. A smile spread over Meg’s face as she painted in tones of ivory black, burnt umber, and burnt sienna the piece she would call A Heart for Any Fate.
The humidity coming off the lake deepened the cold in her fingers. She blew on them and kept working until it was time to pack up her supplies and fold her easel. Dusk was falling on the city ever earlier as they moved closer to winter solstice. But in less than three blocks, she would be home.
After pausing to tie her muffler more firmly about her neck, Meg adjusted her grip on the easel, canvas, and case that held her paint tubes, brushes, and palette. Twice last week, Louis Garibaldi had come with her when she painted, carrying her supplies even though she could manage on her own. The relic business was winding down, and she didn’t mind tipping him for his help. She also gave him a copy of The Adventures of Robin Hood, and he gave her a melted blue marble in return.
With every step she took, her thoughts narrowed to her family. So much had changed since the fire. Some things hadn’t.
In the week since Stephen had come home from the asylum, Meg felt a growing tension between her father and her sister, and at the heart of it was Jasper Davenport. Stephen had fixated upon him the way he had once fixated on patrolling the roof, watching for Rebel spies. He cast about outlandish theories to explain who Jasper was and how he had weaseled his way into Hiram’s estate. Sylvie maintained Jasper was exactly who he said he was. She hadn’t contacted him, but Meg could tell each passing day without him wore Sylvie a little thinner.
Stephen’s traits of suspicion and paranoia were in full force, but he was trying to protect his daughters. After years of emotional detachment, and especially after what felt like his abandonment the night of the fire, Meg could appreciate his need to redeem himself in this area. But Sylvie—poor Sylvie. Meg thought at times she could hear her sister’s heart breaking. Not only had their father forbidden her to see Jasper, but Jasper had done nothing to indicate he wanted to see her.
All Meg wanted was for her family to be together again, truly together. But here was a rift ever widening, and she balanced on a tightrope between them. “What do I do?” she had asked Nate the last time she’d seen him. “I need to fix this. I don’t know how.”
Nate had given her that rare sad smile of his. “You can’t please them both. Please God instead,” he’d told her. “If you don’t know how, just ask Him.”
He had made it sound so easy. Just ask. She had. She did. But so far, the Almighty hadn’t responded in a way that she could hear, and she could see no clear path forward. When she was home—which wasn’t much, with all the painting she was doing outside—she tried to diffuse the charged atmosphere that had filled the shanty. But between her well-intentioned words and the occasional fumbling of an object with her hands, she only succeeded in irritating one family member or the other.
Her cheeks were numb with cold by the time she returned to the shanty. Wiping her feet on the rug, she set down her things, removed her boots, and hung up her cloak and hat.
At the table, Sylvie curled over a ledger. Stephen sat opposite, plying a needle to repair a book binding. A jar of glue sat on the table near a pair of scissors and a spool of thread. It was good to see her father working again, especially at something he’d once excelled at. Perhaps he could excel at it again.
“Good day?” Meg asked.
Sylvie’s pencil hovered above the page. “Why do you always phrase it like that? It’s like you’re leading the witness. Why can’t you just ask how my day was and brace yourself for the answer?”
A legal metaphor. She must be missing Jasper again. “So, not a good day.” Meg moved her painting supplies to the back room and leaned the canvas against the wall before coming out again. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Sylvie gave her a look that said she didn’t.
“She won’t listen to me.” Stephen pulled the thread taut and dipped the needle back into the binding. “I’ve been explaining to her all day why she shouldn’t trust Jasper, and she still isn’t convinced.”
“Surely not when customers have been here,” Meg said.
“What customers?” Sylvie didn’t look up from her accounting book.
The shanty was too small to contain the emotion exuded by both of them.
“Sylvie, I’ll stay here in case anyone decides to come before closing time. Why don’t you call on Anna Hoffman? She’d love to see you. Bring back something delicious, won’t you?”
> No sooner had Meg suggested it than Sylvie was closing her book and throwing her cloak around her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, and left.
Stephen shook his head. “She won’t listen.”
Meg put a kettle on to boil. “Maybe let the matter rest for a while, Father. She obviously doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. In fact, it would be good for you to think about something else too. What’s this book you’re working on?”
“Pilgrim’s Progress. A customer brought it in yesterday for repair. This edition is more than a hundred years old.”
“That shows a lot of faith in you, that they would entrust such a volume to your care. I know you’ll be an excellent steward of it until you return it to its owner.”
His gaze met hers. He set the needle in the gutter of the book. “That’s it. That’s exactly how I feel about you and your sister. You don’t belong to me, you belong to the One who created you. But I’m your steward, and it’s my job to care for you and to repair whatever is broken. I’ve done miserably at it, and I’m trying to make up for lost time. If I come across too strong, it’s only because I’m your father. I mean, I’m trying to be your father.”
Meg wanted to cover his hand with hers but stopped herself in time. “You are. We’ll never stop being your daughters.”
Hope kindled and burst to full flame, warming her to the tips of her fingers and toes. He was getting better. He lacked finesse with his techniques, but his motivation and goals were there. Finally, he was coming home.
A short knock on the door preceded its budging open. “Hallo?” Karl Hoffman blustered inside, cheeks pink from cold. “Still open until five o’clock, ja?”
Meg assured him they were.
“Gut. My Anna and your Sylvie are visiting at our place. I’m in the way there. What do you say, Stephen, may I sit with you and read the paper? I’ll not interrupt your work.”
Stephen lifted his head, obviously surprised that Karl was seeking his company. “Sit!” He wiped a hand over his chin in an old habit that betrayed his discomfort.
Veiled in Smoke Page 31