A Proper Pursuit

by Lynn Austin

  “Too bad we have to go,” he said. “Just when we were winning too.”

  He traded in his chips and stood counting his money as the casino lights dimmed. One of the blackjack dealers offered to escort Nelson and me to the ship for our protection. I thought of Silas’ thieving friends roaming the fairgrounds and told Nelson he should accept.

  “I would feel much safer,” I told him. “People have been robbed here at the fair, you know.”

  “You’re my lucky charm,” he told me again as we boarded the ship. “We make a great team, don’t we?”

  Chapter

  20

  Friday, June 30, 1893

  I managed to forget all about Louis Decker and Folk Night at the settlement house until Friday afternoon. By then, my grandmother was so excited about our evening out that I didn’t have the heart to hurt her feelings by staying home. I decided to douse a handkerchief with perfume and carry it in my pocket so I would have a way to defend myself against the putrid smells. I also wore my least favorite dress and oldest pair of shoes.

  Louis looked thoroughly bathed, combed, tucked, and spitshined when he arrived at the house to escort Grandmother and me. Only his spectacles remained smudged, as usual. He really was a nice-looking man when he was all cleaned up. Not as classically handsome as Nelson, perhaps—and certainly not as well dressed— but attractive, nonetheless.

  The evening began with a dinner held in the dining room where we had served the soup. Thankfully, the delicious aroma of roasting meat overwhelmed the stench of the neighborhood, and I could relax and tuck my perfumed handkerchief into my pocket. Scores of Bohemian people crowded inside the room, some in their colorful, traditional clothes, but most in much humbler attire. I felt a pang of guilt for enjoying the finer things in life that Nelson could offer. I should like Louis Decker. I should gladly choose him and a life of meaning and purpose and good values. Nelson enjoyed gambling— and I had helped him win. I had joined in. First I’d helped a thief and now a gambler. What was wrong with me?

  Grandmother sat with a group of her friends, leaving Louis and me alone—if you can call sitting with hundreds of other people alone. Louis was a very quiet man when he wasn’t preaching, and he didn’t seem to know how to begin a conversation or keep it going. I did all the work of keeping the tennis ball in the air as plates of roast pork, potatoes, vegetables, and several other things I didn’t recognize circulated around our table.

  “Have you been to the World’s Fair, Louis?”

  “Not yet. I’ve been too busy working with our evangelism team.”

  “Are you planning to go this summer?”

  “Only if the Lord leads me, and if it fits His purposes.”

  “You wouldn’t consider going just for fun?” He looked up at me as if he had never heard of the word. At least I think he was looking at me. His glasses were so smudged I didn’t understand how he could see anything at all, including the plate in front of him.

  One of the platters that circulated around our table was piled with slices of a mysterious-looking meat. It had a strange, gelatinous consistency and resembled what you might get if you made a gelatin dessert out of random pieces of leftover meat.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “I can’t pronounce the Bohemian name, but it’s similar to what we call head cheese.”

  “I’ve never heard of head cheese. What’s in it besides cheese?”

  “It isn’t really cheese. They take the animal’s head with all of the unused parts such as the brain, the tongue, and so forth, and boil it together to make a sort of sausage out of it. It’s quite delicious.”

  I quickly passed the plate to the next person. As much as I longed to be as adventurous as Silas McClure, who had eaten rattlesnake, I lacked the stomach for it. And I did not care to sample any body parts from an animal’s head. I nibbled a bit of the roast pork and dumplings but was afraid to fill up, remembering the smelly ride home. What I did eat, however, was delicious. Louis had a voracious appetite and devoured everything in sight.

  “What is the most adventuresome thing you’ve ever eaten?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I once met a person who’d eaten rattlesnake meat. Would you try it?”

  “Only if I had a very good reason to.” I had hoped to make him laugh, but I was beginning to realize that Louis Decker didn’t laugh much. He wasn’t as gloomy and boring as Herman was—Louis would become quite animated when he preached or sang. But I had the feeling that he would never laugh unless God instructed him to.

  “Suppose you became a missionary and the natives you were trying to convert served you something disgusting, like alligator eyeballs. Would you eat them?”

  “That’s different. I would do anything for the sake of the Gospel.”

  Yes, I was quite certain he would. I watched him swipe his bread across his plate to sop up the gravy and asked, “Have you always lived in Chicago?”

  “No. Like Mr. Moody, I came to Chicago to get rich. Mr. Moody was a shoe salesman at one time, and his goal in life was to make a lot of money. But then the Lord changed his life and he gave up chasing wealth to serve God. That’s basically my story too.”

  “Where do you see yourself living and working after you finish school?”

  “Wherever God sends me.”

  For dessert we had little cookies with fruit in the middle of them, and there was something about the sight of them, or maybe the flavor, that seemed familiar to me. The Bohemian women pronounced them “ko-latch-key.”

  “I’ve eaten cookies like these before,” I told Louis. “I can’t recall when or where.”

  Everyone relaxed while we waited for the folk dancing to begin, and some of the smaller children chased each other around the tables, giggling. The sound of their laughter was as lovely as the music I had heard with Nelson Kent. I remembered Herman Beckett saying that he wanted a family, and Grandmother had told me that Louis was wonderful with the children. Yet I suspected that if I asked Louis if he envisioned children in his future, his reply would be something like, “Whatever God plans for me.”

  “Tell me about your family, Louis.”

  “My father owns a bakery in Milwaukee. We’re just an ordinary family—three sisters, two brothers. I came to Chicago to make my mark in life, and I was doing very well in the business world until I saw the light of Christ. I’m like the man Jesus healed: I once was blind, but now I see.” Louis always managed to talk more about God than about himself. I decided to change my tactics.

  “If you had to choose between being struck blind and never being able to see the face of your beloved again, or becoming permanently deaf and being denied the sound of music and of a child’s laughter, which would you choose?”

  “I believe that we’re responsible for our own behavior, but the choices you’re talking about come from God. Not a hair can fall from our heads unless it’s His will. The disciples once asked Jesus about a man born blind and wanted to know who had sinned to cause that tragedy. Jesus said that the man had been born blind in order that God would be glorified. And so, whether deaf or blind, I pray that my life would bring Him glory.”

  Of the many times I had asked that question, I had never heard an answer quite like Louis’. I decided to ask another one.

  “If you had to choose between being rich but disfigured, or poor but handsome, which would you choose?”

  “The Bible says, ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.’ … That’s from Proverbs.”

  The moment he mentioned stealing, I thought of Silas McClure. And wealth reminded me of Nelson Kent.

  “Is money bad? Should wealthy people give it all away?”

  “No, money itself isn’t bad. The Bible says that it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil.”

  I nodded, pretending to understand what he was talk
ing about. I had never met anyone who talked about the Bible as much as Louis did. He made me ashamed of my shallowness. So I pretended to understand.

  Once again, I thought of Aunt Matt’s contention that every married woman was an actress. I was beginning to think she was right— and also that all the unmarried women, like myself, were continually auditioning to become actresses. Ever since coming to Chicago I seemed to be playacting. I had to smile enigmatically at Aunt Agnes’ parties. I had to pretend not to be bored when I was with Herman Beckett. And now I had to pretend to be nice with Louis Decker. In fact, the only person I had been myself with was Silas McClure— and he was a thief! What did that say about me?

  “Do you think it’s possible for people to change?” I asked, still thinking of Silas.

  “Not on their own. Only God can transform people. But when the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.”

  “What about real criminals? Have you ever known a hardened criminal, such as a thief or a con man, to change his way of life after hearing Mr. Moody preach?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard plenty of stories where that’s happened. And of course there’s the example of the thief who was crucified beside Christ. After the thief repented, Jesus told him, ‘Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.’ ”

  Talking to Louis Decker was like conversing with Moses or one of the Apostles. I wondered what he had been like before he’d started studying the Bible.

  The sound of musical instruments warming up began to drift into the restaurant as we talked—a clarinet, an accordion, a couple of violins, a bass fiddle—and soon a little orchestra began to play outside in the street. The musicians were quite good. Everyone spilled outside to listen and to watch the dancers perform in their colorful, embroidered dresses. As I watched, the same feeling of familiarity that I’d had with the cookies suddenly returned. This dance was somehow familiar to me.

  “I’ve heard this music before,” I told Louis. “I can’t recall where.”

  “It certainly is lively,” he said, clapping in tune.

  For the next dance, the women all produced colorful scarves and waved them joyfully in the air as they whirled in time to the music. That’s when it all came back to me: the bright colors, the dancing, the joy—my mother used to twirl a colorful scarf the same way and sing in another language as we danced around the room together.My heart pounded with excitement as the memory returned. It had been a long time ago. I had been very small. And Mother had been very beautiful.

  Later, the band played a slow tune, and tears filled my eyes as the immigrants linked arms to sing along. I had no idea what the words meant, but I know that my mother used to sing the same song to me as a lullaby. She would sit on my bed stroking my hair, singing to me until I fell asleep. A tear rolled down my cheek as the song ended.

  “That was beautiful, wasn’t it?” Louis asked. I nodded. I didn’t reveal the real reason for my tears.

  By the time the evening ended and people began to leave, many of the smaller children had grown tired and overly excited. I heard a little girl crying, “I don’t want to go,” and I couldn’t blame her. She would have to leave the warm companionship and laughter and music to go home to a bleak tenement building. The child’s mother scooped her up in her arms.

  “Come to Mama, ho-cheech-ka,” she murmured. For a moment, the street in front of me seemed to tilt. I had to grip Louis’ arm to keep from stumbling as another memory stirred. That was what my mother used to call me. She would hug me as tightly as Aunt Birdie always did and whisper the word tenderly, just as that mother had: ho-cheech-ka.

  “Are you all right, Violet?”

  “No … I mean … I think my mother might have been Bohemian.”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “She … she left when I was nine years old. I don’t know where she is.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I knew I had discovered an important clue to my mother’s past, and like the little girl, I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay and talk to these people and see what other memories of my mother might spring to life. But the evening had drawn to a close and everyone was leaving.

  I felt too emotional to converse much on the way home, so I listened as Louis and my grandmother talked. She had much more in common with him than I did. They spoke the same language, sprinkled with Bible verses and references to God as if He were an old friend.

  “Thank you for a nice evening,” I told Louis at our front door.

  “I hope to see you again soon, Violet.”

  The moment the door closed, I turned to my grandmother. “May I ask you just one question about my mother?”

  “You may ask. I can’t promise I’ll be able to answer it.”

  “The songs tonight reminded me of her.” My voice trembled with emotion. “She used to sing tunes like that to me. And then I heard a mother call her child ho-cheech-ka, and that was what Mother used to call me. Was she a Bohemian immigrant?”

  “I believe that her family might have been from that region of Europe, yes.”

  “So she was poor, like those people, before she married my father?”

  “I never saw her house, Violet, and I never met her family.”

  “Please tell me something,” I begged as my tears spilled over. “Anything! What does it matter now, since my parents are divorced and Father is going to marry Maude O’Neill?”

  Grandmother saw my tears and hugged me close. Then she led me into the kitchen and sat me down at the table while she fixed a pot of tea.

  “Your parents met on the night of the Great Fire, as you know. Your father rescued her.” I wanted to ask how, but I was afraid to interrupt. “Your mother lost everything she owned. Our church in Lockport took in many of the homeless families—and there were so many of them. More than one hundred thousand people here in Chicago lost everything in the fire. Your father brought your mother home to our church in Lockport. When they fell in love and were married, she didn’t return to Chicago. There was nothing to go back for, she said.”

  “They really loved each other?”

  “Yes, at one time, they really did.”

  “What happened?”

  Grandmother shook her head. She wouldn’t answer.

  “Aunt Birdie keeps telling me that I should marry for love, but that’s what my parents did, and look what happened to them. I need to know why their love ended and why my mother left.”

  “Have you asked your father that question?”

  “He told me that she hated her life in Lockport, hated being tied down.”

  “He would know much more about it than I do.”

  “But why was she so unhappy? Please tell me something!”

  Grandmother reached across the table and took my hand in hers. “Violet, I don’t know all the details of your parents’ lives, but I do know there were huge differences between them. And once Angeline married John, she had new expectations placed on her as his wife. He is a prominent man in the community, as you know.”

  My grandmother gave my hand a squeeze, then released it. I watched her take a sip of tea and tried to picture my father when he had been young and in love. I couldn’t do it. It was like trying to imagine Herman Beckett as Shakespeare’s Romeo.

  My grandmother set her teacup down and said, “Your mother came from Chicago and your father from tiny little Lockport. Maybe she missed the excitement of the city once in a while. Maybe she missed her own family too.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but that doesn’t explain why she left me. Didn’t she love me?”

  Tears filled my eyes again. Grandmother stood and hurried to my side, smoothing back my hair and kissing my forehead. She had tears in her eyes as well.

  “She loved you very, very much, Violet Rose. I know that to be true.”

  “Then why did she leave me? Do you know why?”

  Grandmother bent and drew me into her arms, holding me tightly. “I’m sorry, Violet Rose. You need to ask your father that question.”r />
  Chapter

  21

  Saturday, July 1, 1893

  I stayed in bed the next morning until long past breakfast. If I kept the pillow over my head to drown out all of the other noises, I could recall the music from the night before and imagine the dancers whirling. I wanted to hang on to the wispy memories of my mother for as long as possible.

  It was Saturday, and my grandmother and aunts were at home, but I didn’t want to face any of them. They all had such high hopes for me, which I had encouraged by accompanying them on their various pursuits. But I felt very confused. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. So I remained in bed.

  It was close to noon when I heard Aunt Agnes’ silvery voice gilding our front hallway. “Bonjour, darlings! How is everyone?”

  I made up my mind that I would plead illness rather than endure any social calls with her today. Even so, it was rude of me to remain in bed when she had come to call. I got dressed and went downstairs. All four of the Howell sisters sat in the parlor.

  “Bonjour, Violet dear. Good news! Nelson simply raves about you. His grandmother is so pleased. So is his father, by the way. Did you enjoy the concert at the fair the other night? And how was the party afterward?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Grandmother seemed to be waiting for my reply too. They would be shocked to learn about the gambling. I was still trying to formulate a response when someone knocked on the front door.

  “I’ll get it,” Aunt Birdie sang. She fluttered out to the hallway, and a moment later I heard her say, “Why, it’s Johnny!”

  I jumped up and hurried to the foyer—and there stood my father on the other side of Aunt Birdie’s embrace.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I came for you,” he replied, as if stating the obvious. “I’m going to accompany you home and help with your trunk.”

  “Oh, how nice,” Aunt Birdie said.

  “Home?” I shouted, forgetting to be ladylike. “I just got here!”