by Lynn Austin
“Violet, you’ve been here for a month.”
“Today is the first day of July,” Aunt Birdie said helpfully.
“But I’m not ready to go home!”
Father looked perplexed. “You told me that you wanted to see the World’s Columbian Exposition. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but—” “Violet has seen it four times. Isn’t that right, dear?” Aunt Birdie gestured to all the souvenirs I had collected, which for some reason had ended up on the hall table: the Ferris wheel coin from Silas McClure, the picture postcards from Herman Beckett, the silk scarf from Aunt Matt, and the beautiful ivory fan with Columbus’ portrait on it from Nelson Kent.
“Four times?” Father repeated. “Then you should be more than ready to come home.”
“Shall I help you pack?” Aunt Birdie asked.
“I don’t want to go home!” I sounded like one of the petulant children at the settlement house last night.
Aunt Matt marched into the foyer. “Lunch is ready,” she declared. “Let’s sit down and eat like civilized people. It’s nothing fancy, Agnes, only vegetable soup, but you’re welcome to join us.”
“I believe I will,” Agnes said. “John and I need to talk “ We all trooped into the dining room and sat down. Aunt Matt filled our soup bowls and Grandmother prayed. The room felt tense as everyone passed the rolls and butter around the table. I stared at my soup, unable to eat.
“I spoke with Herman Beckett,” my father began. “He holds you in very high regard, Violet, and is eager for your return. Maude says that he is serious about your courtship. She thinks you should marry him.”
“We hardly know each other!”
“That’s why he’s eager for your return, so he can court you in earnest. He seemed very pleased when I told him that I was coming to fetch you this weekend.”
“Maude just wants to marry me off so she’ll be rid of me.”
“That’s very unkind, Violet. Maude has your best interests at heart.”
“Wait a minute, John,” Aunt Agnes said. “Who is this suitor you’re discussing?”
“He’s a young man from Lockport. He works as a shipping clerk.”
“He’s a bore,” I mumbled.
“John, dear, never mind some yokel from Lockport. I’ve found a much better match for our Violet. His father is the business tycoon Howard Kent. His family is swimming in old money. And Nelson’s grandmother insists that he has grown very fond of our Violet. She hinted that he might be ready to propose soon.”
I nearly choked on a mouthful of lemonade. I coughed a few times, then managed to say, “I like Nelson, but I’m hardly ready to marry him.”
“For goodness’ sakes, why not?” Agnes asked. “Nelson is eager to settle down and take his place in his father’s firm. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”
“Yes, for Nelson.”
“I don’t know why you’re being so contrary,” Agnes said, “but you had better come to your senses before it’s too late. Things are going so well with him, and he’s a wonderful catch. John, perhaps you could speak with Nelson’s father while you’re here in the city. I could arrange a luncheon or something so you could meet the Kent family.”
“It does sound promising,” Father said.
I got my grandmother’s attention across the table and pleaded silently with her for help.
“Louis Decker admires our Violet a great deal too,” she said, jumping in. I lowered my head in despair. That wasn’t at all what I’d wanted from her. “If Louis knew you were in town, John, I’m sure he would want to ask permission to court Violet as well.”
“Who is this Louis Decker?” Agnes asked. “Is he any relation to Homer and Nettie Decker on Prairie Avenue?”
“I doubt it,” Grandmother said. “But I think John should meet Louis in person, rather than hear about him or his family secondhand from me.”
“He must be a religious zealot,” my father muttered. “I’m not interested in meeting one of those. I wouldn’t let my daughter marry one either.” He turned to face me again. “If you aren’t interested in this Kent fellow, then I want you to come home. Herman Beckett would make an excellent husband. He comes from a very good family.”
“What about love?” I asked. “Shouldn’t two people love each other before they marry?”
My father made a face. “Don’t be naïve, Violet. There is plenty of time for love to grow once a commitment has been made.”
Aunt Matt dropped her soup spoon with a clatter. I thought she had shown remarkable restraint by keeping quiet for as long as she had. “This is nearly the twentieth century, John, not the fourteenth! Arranged marriages are a thing of the past. Violet is a sensible young woman. Shouldn’t she be allowed to choose for herself?”
“Violet, dear,” Aunt Birdie said, “make certain you marry for love.”
Her words gave me an idea. “Do you love Maude?” I asked my father.
“We aren’t discussing Maude; we’re discussing you. I’m responsible for you. Your future is much too important for you to ruin by making a bad choice.”
“Aunt Birdie, help me! Please!” I begged, tugging on her sleeve. “Tell my father how important love is.”
Aunt Birdie picked up her spoon and tapped it against her water glass to command everyone’s attention. “I think Violet should marry that nice gentleman with the wonderful smile. He’s madly in love with her.”
“Oh no.” I covered my face with both hands.
“Which gentleman is that?” Father asked.
“I think Birdie means the man who accompanied Violet on the train from Lockport,” Grandmother said.
This was getting worse and worse. If Father learned about Silas McClure, he would never trust my judgment again. I cringed, waiting for Father to angrily declare that no one had accompanied me from Lockport, but Aunt Birdie spoke first.
“I don’t recall his name, but he gave us his card. I’ll go get it.” She rose from the table and headed out to the hall to fetch the silver tray. Thank goodness I had hidden all of Silas’ cards inside my diary. How would I ever explain why I foolishly had gone to the fair with a thief who sold Dr. Dean’s Blood Builder?
“Don’t mind her,” I said after Aunt Birdie had left the room. I waited until my father took another slurp of his soup and asked, “What if I’m not ready to marry?”
“Why wouldn’t you be ready? You’ve finished school, you’ll be twenty-one next April. What else would you do with yourself?”
“Women are doing all sorts of things. I saw some of their accomplishments when I visited the Woman’s Pavilion with Aunt Matt.”
“I might have known.” He gave Aunt Matt a dark look. I turned to her next, silently pleading for help.
“John knows my opinion on the matter,” she said. “Violet doesn’t need to marry at all in order to lead a fulfilling life. But if she does choose to marry, it should be to whomever she wants, whenever she wants. And it should be to someone who loves her and appreciates her for herself, not for what he stands to gain from the marriage.”
“I disagree,” Father said. “I think parents are in a much better position than their children are to see the good qualities in a spouse and make a sound choice. Parents have the maturity and experience that young people lack.”
“Why, John Jacob Hayes!” Grandmother said. “I’m surprised you would say that, considering your own experience.”
“My own experience serves to prove my point. I believe I have made a much better choice for my second marriage now that I’m a mature adult. You’ll see that immediately when you meet Maude O’Neill. And that’s another reason why you need to come home, Violet. Maude would like to spend some time with you and get to know you a little better since we’re going to become a family in a few months.”
My stomach seethed in protest. My soup lay untouched. If only I could find my mother and remind Father of the power of true love.
“And it’s because of my own experience that I’ve decided to
choose for my daughter as well,” Father continued. “I want Violet to avoid repeating the mistakes I’ve made. Marriages work better if people are from a similar background, a similar social class.” I knew he was talking about my mother.
I realized that I didn’t have a pattern for a happy marriage. Father was divorced, Aunt Matt was a spinster, Aunt Agnes’ husband had affairs, and even Grandmother had admitted that her marriage hadn’t been ideal. Aunt Birdie claimed to be happily married, but Uncle Gilbert was dead. Besides, Birdie seemed to tap-dance around reality a great deal of the time.
“I want to know what went wrong between you and Mother,” I said boldly.
“I’ve already explained it to you, and I’m not going to repeat myself.” He stuffed a roll into his mouth to avoid saying more.
I refused to give up. “You said she was bored, that she hated living in Lockport and being tied down. That’s exactly how I feel! I don’t want to settle down in Lockport either, and be bored to death by Herman Beckett.”
“Violet is so much like her mother, isn’t she?” Aunt Birdie asked as she glided back into the dining room with the empty silver platter.
Her question was met with a long, spine-tingling silence. It was as if she had lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite, and everyone in the room was holding his or her breath, waiting for it to explode. I broke the silence.
“Am I like her, Aunt Birdie? In what way?”
Father cleared his throat, interrupting before she could reply. He held up the empty breadbasket. “Are there any more rolls, Aunt Bertha? I would like another one.”
“I’ll go and see,” she said with a smile.
“You told me that you find Nelson Kent interesting,” Aunt Agnes said. “Think of what a wonderful life you could have with him.”
Yes, if I was willing to share him with Katya. I had to do something, fast, but I was too panic-stricken to figure out a plan. I had come to Chicago with two goals and had accomplished neither. Now it was time to return home. Why hadn’t I figured out a way to find my mother and to stop Father’s marriage? Why had I wasted time running around the city with worthless suitors? If I didn’t find my mother soon, I would have to marry whomever my father chose.
“It’s my life, isn’t it?” I blurted. “I don’t trust you to choose for me, Father. I hate Maude. Besides, you lied to me all these years about my mother.” I knew I sounded childish, but I was desperate.
“I kept the truth from you for your own good. I was protecting you. You can be very impulsive and prone to theatrics, Violet. That’s why I want to see you safely married to a good husband who will provide you with a comfortable life.”
“Can’t you give Violet a little more time with us, John?” Grandmother asked. “July has just begun.”
I saw him glance briefly at Aunt Matt. She saw it too.
“He’s afraid I’ll be a bad influence on you, Violet.”
“But if she spends more time with Nelson Kent,” Aunt Agnes said, “I’m certain he’ll propose.”
“Do you want to continue seeing this Kent fellow?” Father asked.
“Yes,” I said, gulping. I wasn’t ready to marry Nelson, but courting him would buy me some more time.
Father paused for a long time while he thought it over. “All right,” he said with a huge sigh. “I suppose you can stay.”
“Oh, how nice,” Aunt Birdie said.
“Will you be spending the weekend with us, John?” my grandmother asked. “I can make up an extra bed …”
“No, I think I’ll catch the train home tonight.” He pulled out his pocket watch, stared at it for a moment, then snapped it closed again. “Maude will be expecting me this evening. But I’ll be back in two weeks, Violet, do you understand? You seem to have no shortage of interested suitors from which to choose. Just don’t prolong this, or I’ll be forced to make the decision for you.”
Chapter
22
I couldn’t sleep that night. I needed to know which man I was destined to marry. My only recourse was to perform the Midnight Stairway Ritual.
Ruth Schultz and I had tried the ritual at school with mixed results. According to tradition, if a woman wanted to see the face of her future husband she had to dress all in white, let down her hair, and wait until just before the stroke of midnight. Then, with an uplifted candle in her right hand and a mirror in her left, she had to walk slowly down the stairs, backward, all the way to the cellar. When she reached the final step and the clock struck twelve, her future husband’s face would appear in the mirror.
Ruth tried it first and swore that she saw a handsome man’s face. “He was someone I didn’t know,” she’d said, “But I’ll recognize him the moment I see him again.”
Ruth and I had only one mirror and one candle so I had to wait until the second night for my turn. The ritual had to be performed at the stroke of midnight. Besides, it was easier to walk backward down the stairs with someone helping you. Otherwise, you risked falling down the stairs and breaking your neck and never finding your one true love. No one wanted to marry a cripple.
But when my turn came the second night, a jealous classmate who had gotten wind of what Ruth and I were doing snitched on us. The headmistress caught us and punished us for being out of bed after curfew. The fact that we had “endangered the dormitory” with a lit candle had prolonged our imprisonment. I never did see my future husband’s face. Now, in desperation, I decided to try the midnight ritual without Ruth’s help.
I borrowed a candle from the silver candelabra on the buffet in the dining room and a box of matches from the kitchen drawer. I didn’t have a hand mirror, so I decided to use Aunt Birdie’s silver tray. It was shiny enough for me to see my reflection, and besides, it wouldn’t break if I fell down the stairs. My luck had been pretty bad lately, so I couldn’t risk seven more years of it.
I let down my hair, dressed in my white muslin slip, lit the candle, and crept from my bedroom as midnight approached. My stomach felt as knotted as one of my knitting projects as I stood at the top of the stairs and waited for the case clock in the hallway to begin chiming the hour.
Bong!
The first stroke startled me as it reverberated through the silent house. I quickly recovered and started carefully down the steps, walking backward.
Bong! … Bong! …
I reached the front foyer and grabbed the silver tray from the hall table.
Bong! … Bong! … Bong! …
I could hear Aunt Matt snoring as I crept backward down the hall past her door. The clock was still chiming as I reached behind me to open the cellar door and start down.
Bong! …
My foot touched the last step at the stroke of twelve, and I held up the mirror, waiting for the face of my husband to appear. Instead, a shadowy figure suddenly materialized in front of me at the top of the stairs.
I gasped in fright. I couldn’t seem to scream. My mind told me to run, but I didn’t know what dangers loomed in the murky blackness behind me. Besides, the only part of me that could move was my heart, which was trying to escape from my chest.
Suddenly a trembling voice called out, “Give me back my silver tray you dirty, rotten thief!”
Aunt Birdie.
My knees gave way and I sank to the cellar floor in relief. Aunt Birdie slowly descended the stairs, brandishing an umbrella like a club. I finally found my voice.
“Aunt Birdie, wait! It’s me! Violet!”
She halted, her eyes wide with surprise. “Violet Rose Hayes! Why in the world are you stealing my silver tray?”
“I’m not stealing it. I’m … I’m using it to see my husband’s face.” But the stroke of midnight had long since passed, and his face was lost to me.
Aunt Birdie sat down on the stairs and laid the umbrella in her lap.When my heart finally slowed again, I explained what I had been doing.
“I should have tried the wedding cake method,” I said when I’d finished my story.
“Wedding cake?”
“It’s another test Ruth told me about. You’re supposed to put a slice of wedding cake under your pillow before you go to sleep. She says you’ll dream about the man you’ll marry that night.”
“Oh, how nice.”
“But I haven’t been to any weddings, Aunt Birdie, and I don’t intend to wait for my father’s. I have to find my one true love and stop Father from marrying Maude—and I’m running out of time.”
“I’ve never heard of either of those methods for discovering who you’ll marry, dear, but I do know one method that works every time.”
“Really? What do I have to do?”
“You place two walnuts on the stove, one for your suitor and one for yourself. If your suitor’s walnut cracks or jumps, it means he will be unfaithful to you. If it blazes and burns, it means that he loves you. And if his and yours burst into flames at the same time it means you will marry him.”
I scrambled to my feet. “I’m going to try it.”
“Oh, how nice.”
We went upstairs to the kitchen. The fire in the stove was out since it was summertime, but we shoved in a few sticks of kindling along with one of Aunt Matt’s newspapers, all crumpled up. I blew on the wood to stoke the flames while Aunt Birdie fetched a bag of walnuts from the pantry.
“I have more than one suitor,” I told her. “Will it still work if I test all three?”
“Let’s try it and see.” She pulled a chair over to the stove and sat down to watch.
“The first one is for me,” I said, placing one walnut on the stove. “And this one is for Nelson Kent.” I felt the heat from the growing fire as I put the second walnut in place. “The third is for Louis Decker … and this fourth one is for Herman Beckett.”
“Don’t forget that other gentleman.” Aunt Birdie handed me another walnut.
“Which other gentleman?” But I knew very well whom she meant.
“You know, that man with the autumn blue eyes and beautiful smile.”
“He’s not even in the contest, Aunt Birdie.” She looked so sad with her lips in a pout and her head tilted to one side that I relented. What could it hurt? Besides, she already had taken Silas McClure’s walnut away from me and laid it on the stove.