A Proper Pursuit

by Lynn Austin

  “By the way, Aunt Matt,” I said as we sat in the kitchen, “I never thanked you for supporting my decision to wear bloomers the other day.”

  “You’re welcome. You looked ridiculous in them, but it was the principle that mattered.”

  “Oh. Well, thanks anyway.”

  Having heard the word “march,” I chose the largest, widestbrimmed hat that I owned, hoping to hide beneath it. As usual, Aunt Matt’s thundering lecture began as soon as we boarded the crowded streetcar.

  “This has been a landmark year for legislation that protects women and children,” she began. “Our lawmakers down in Springfield just passed the Illinois Factory Act. It bans labor for all children under the age of fourteen and regulates work for children between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. The law also forbids garment-making in the tenements. Work must be done in a factory with certain safety guidelines in place. And the law states that women and minors can’t be made to work more than eight hours a day. In other words, factory owners will no longer be allowed to exploit women and children in order to boost their profits.”

  “That sounds like a very good law.”

  “It is indeed. Some of us have lobbied very hard to get it passed. Unfortunately, there are factory owners who simply ignore it. We’ve been gathering the names and locations of the most offensive places so that we can stage demonstrations and read them the law.”

  “That sounds … confrontational.”

  “It is.”

  I suddenly felt very reckless and brave. My father might force me to move back to Lockport and settle down next week, but at least I would have an adventurous story to tell my children at bedtime.

  Aunt Matt and I rode a very long way and changed streetcars three times before meeting up with the other women who were marching with us. Quite a mob of us showed up. The neighborhood near the river where we gathered stank of fish. It was every bit as ugly and unpleasant as the area near the settlement house, but since none of the other women covered their noses, I decided not to cover mine. I hoped that the women we’d come to rescue appreciated our sacrifice.

  No one carried signs this time, so I had nothing to hide behind except my floppy hat. I decided that it didn’t matter. I felt proud to be making a difference in the world. We lined up in the middle of the street a few blocks from the factory and began to march toward it. Several women had brought pots and pans, which they banged together as we chanted, “Unfair to women and children! Unfair to women and children!”

  People came out of saloons and tenements to see what was going on. Pedestrians turned to watch. Little children skipped alongside of us. As we neared the river, dockworkers stopped loading their ships to stare. One group of men pointed and laughed and called us unrepeatable names.

  “Get out of the road!” an ice vendor yelled. “My ice is melting!” He and several other deliverymen grew irate because our march blocked the street. It was such fun. I wished Ruth Schultz were with me.

  “If all of these factories are breaking the law,” I asked Aunt Matt, “shouldn’t the police be raiding them instead of us?”

  “Of course they should. But the police have been known to take a bribe to look the other way instead of enforcing the law. Or else they plead ignorance. In the end, it’s usually up to women like us to protect other women and children.”

  The door to the low-slung brick factory stood open on this sweltering July day, and we poured inside as if storming a castle. The interior was so dark and dingy that I could hardly see where I was going at first. The dusty, lint-filled air made me sneeze. I heard the clatter of hundreds of sewing machines before I saw them—row after row of them, stretching into the dim workshop, with a woman bent over each one, sewing as if in a race against time.

  As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I realized that most of the seamstresses were teenaged girls, younger than I was. Each had a towering pile of clothing pieces by her side, waiting to be stitched. Small children scurried around between the rows, carrying more bundles of cloth. The workers glanced up when we entered, then quickly resumed sewing. A man I assumed to be the factory manager hurried over to us.

  “Hey, now, see here! What’s going on? You’re trespassing on private property!” The woman who had led our march launched into a heated debate with him, enumerating the details of the new Illinois Factory Act.

  Meanwhile, the other women in our group quickly fanned out in every direction, weaving up and down the rows, informing the workers of their rights. I followed my Aunt Matt.

  “A new law has been passed, and this factory is violating it,” she announced in her commanding voice. “You no longer have to work more than eight hours a day. You have the right to refuse to work longer. The owner must provide safe working conditions.” And so on.

  Three men, who I assumed were foremen, started running up and down the aisles trying to round up the marauding marchers like so many stray cats.

  “You’re trespassing! Get off our property.”

  “Go ahead and summon the police,” Aunt Matt told one of them. “They’ll arrest you for being in violation of the Illinois Factory Act.”

  It turned into quite a circus. In fact, it would have been comical if it hadn’t been so exhilarating. Through it all, the teenaged girls kept right on sewing as if their lives depended on it. Maybe they did.

  Eventually, everyone grew tired of the chase. Aunt Matt and I marched from the factory with the other women, cheering in victory. Sweat rolled down Matt’s stern, flushed face as I fell into step beside her. Then I remembered my grandmother’s friend Irina.

  “Um … Aunt Matt? What about all the women with little children who work at home? How will they make a living from now on if it’s against the law to work in the tenements?”

  “Those women are being taken advantage of at the moment, and they don’t even know it.” We were parading back down the street in triumph, and Aunt Matt and I had to shout in order to be heard above the sound of cheering and banging pots. “The point of the law is to make factory owners hire those women to work decent hours for a fair wage in a safe environment, instead of paying them mere pennies for hours and hours of labor at home. Children shouldn’t be working at all. If women ran the world, all of the children would be in school where they belong. Education is the only way that the working poor will ever get ahead in this world. If factories paid their mothers a fair wage, indigent children could attend school.”

  “When I visited the tenements with my grandmother, it seemed like there were thousands of children—most of them working. And the women seemed little better than slaves.”

  “I know. And it’s very difficult to change the status quo, especially if you’re a woman. Without the right to vote, women in our society are powerless. They are forced to work for slave wages in poor working conditions, or else get married and have too many children. The prettier women can make money in bawdy houses, I suppose. Mind you, I don’t condemn women who make that choice. But I would like to give them a better alternative.”

  “Thank you for taking me today,” I said when we reached our first streetcar stop. “I found it very invigorating to do something worthwhile.”

  “We’ll be marching to other factories in the coming weeks if you want to join me again.”

  “I’d love to—but I’ll only be in Chicago for another week, remember? My father is taking me home. And I don’t want to go.”

  We sat on the streetcar in companionable silence, heading toward home again. The more I thought about returning to Lockport without finding my mother, the more anxious I became.

  “Aunt Matt, will you talk to my father? Will you help me convince him to let me stay?”

  “I would be happy to, but I’m sorry to say that he’s not likely to listen to me. He thinks I’m a bad influence on you.”

  “No, you’ve been a wonderful influence, Aunt Matt. I’ve learned so much from you.” I waited until we’d disembarked from the first car and boarded the second before saying, “I’ve had
two marriage proposals this week. One from Nelson Kent and one from Herman Beckett.”

  “You don’t sound very pleased.”

  “I’m not in love with either of them. But Father wants me to get married, and I’m afraid that if I don’t choose one of them he’ll decide for me.”

  Aunt Matt’s fists seemed to clench a little tighter. “Someday fathers won’t have that kind of power over their daughters.”

  “I wish ‘someday’ would come soon… . Can I tell you a secret, Aunt Matt? The truth is that I came to Chicago to find my mother. Father told me she was ill all these years, and when I finally learned that she wasn’t, I decided to find her and ask her if I could live with her. I’ve been trying to learn more about my parents and their past, and one of the clues I discovered is this address.” I pulled the paper from my pocket and showed it to her. “Do you know where Bishop Street is? Would you be willing to take me there?”

  “If it’s where I think it is, it’s out of the question. That’s not a very nice part of town, Violet.” She handed the paper back to me and said, “What makes you think your mother is at this address?”

  “I don’t know whether she is or not, but someone told me that my father used to go there. It’s connected with Uncle Philip, somehow. And Aunt Birdie said that Philip knew my mother.”

  “You’ve lost me, Violet.”

  “I didn’t even know I had an Uncle Philip until Aunt Birdie showed me his picture a few days ago. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about him?”

  “It’s Florence’s place to tell you about Philip, not mine.”

  “But I want to know—” “I won’t talk about him, Violet. But I will tell you that Birdie imagines things. Philip has nothing to do with finding your mother.”

  I groaned in frustration. “Don’t you understand? If I don’t solve this mystery I’ll have to choose a husband.”

  “I honestly don’t believe that your father would force you to marry against your will. You don’t have to marry at all, you know.”

  “I know. But I want to find out what it’s like to fall in love, and to be kissed. No one has ever kissed me, Aunt Matt, and it looks so … so wonderful.” I drew a breath for courage and decided to take a chance. “Aunt Birdie also told me that you were engaged once. Do you mind if I ask why you broke it off?”

  Aunt Matt was quiet for so long that I was afraid I had offended her—or else hurt her feelings. According to Birdie, Aunt Matt had loved her beau deeply.

  “I didn’t marry Robert,” she finally said, “because he didn’t love me.” She was speaking very quietly for once. “When he asked me to marry him, he had ulterior motives.”

  I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. After we’d boarded the last streetcar, I decided to probe again.

  “Aunt Birdie said that your beau turned out to be a thief.” I hadn’t thought about Silas McClure all morning, but he suddenly sprang to life in my mind with his bright, candelabra grin.

  “A thief?” Matt repeated. “I’m not sure what she meant.”

  “Well, what did happen to him?”

  “My sister Agnes threw an engagement party for us,” she said with a sigh. “Everything was going well until Robert and a friend went outside to smoke cigars. They were gone for quite a while, so I went outside to find him. That’s when I accidentally overheard him talking.” Aunt Matt was usually so stern and abrupt, but now her voice grew soft with emotion.

  “I heard him saying unkind things about … about my physical appearance. He and his friend were laughing at me because … because I had been foolish enough to fall in love with him. He told his friend that he didn’t love me. He had been lying to me when he’d said that he did. I don’t think he even liked me. His friend asked Robert why he’d proposed to me, and he said it was because my father was going to die soon, and I would inherit the house and all of Father’s estate. By law, a woman’s inheritance transferred to her husband the moment they were married.”

  I didn’t know what to say. No wonder Aunt Matt distrusted men. “Aunt Birdie was right when she called him a thief,” I finally murmured.

  “Yes. I suppose she was.” Her voice quavered with emotion— even after all these years.

  I was no longer sure that I wanted to fall in love if it hurt this much. Aunt Birdie was still devastated after losing Gilbert. My father had become emotional when he’d talked about my mother. And now I’d learned that Aunt Matt still felt the pain of rejection after all these years. Romance novels never warned about this side of love—the not-so- happily-ever-after part.

  “Now, Violet,” she said, clearing her throat. “I don’t want to sound critical, but is what Robert Tucker planned to do so different from what Agnes did, marrying Henry Paine for money and social privilege?Would it be so very different from your choosing a husband you didn’t love for no other reason than because he’s wealthy?”

  Ouch!

  “But … but there are a lot of women like me who have no way of supporting ourselves. We have to marry a man who can support us.”

  “He doesn’t have to be wealthy, does he? Any decent, honest, hard-working man can support you. The point I’m trying to make is that everyone—man or woman—should marry because they are in love, not for what they stand to gain. And I hope that you’ll do the same.”

  “Do you believe in love?” I asked after we stepped off the streetcar near home.

  “Yes, of course,” she said sternly. “The problem is, most of us are selfish. And so we often choose a mate for selfish reasons. That’s my advice as far as your two proposals are concerned. Don’t marry either man for selfish reasons. And make sure they aren’t marrying you for selfish reasons either.”

  I now had one week. And two marriage proposals.

  I had to find my mother.

  Chapter

  27

  That evening the house felt so warm and stuffy, even with all of the windows open, that I could scarcely breathe. Part of it might have been panic. My life seemed headed on a course that I couldn’t control.

  My bedroom was especially hot, so I went outside after supper and sat on the front steps, hoping to find a cool breeze—and a plan. I needed to make sense of the various clues I had been given and find a way to solve all the mysteries I’d unearthed. Maybe they would lead to my mother.

  Daylight was fading and the lamplighter was making his way along our street, lighting the gas lamps, when I saw Silas McClure striding toward our house from the streetcar stop. I recognized him by his smooth, boneless stride. When I’d seen him on the train that first day I had described his movements as slippery, but I viewed Silas differently now that he no longer oiled his hair and wore his cheesy suit. His athletic stride was smooth and panther-like, and he carried himself as if every muscle was so well greased he could break into a run at a moment’s notice. No doubt he needed to stay fit in order to make quick getaways.

  He saw me as he approached and waved. I sprang to my feet, longing to run to him and ask if he’d found my mother. But I noticed that his grin wasn’t as bright as usual, and I feared bad news.

  “Good evening, Violet.” He swept off his hat, revealing clean, wavy hair.

  “Good evening, Silas. Do you have news of my mother?”

  He exhaled. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve had no luck, so far. I haven’t been able to locate anyone by the name of Angeline Hayes here in the city.”

  I slapped my fists against my thighs in frustration. For the first time I began to wonder if she still lived in Chicago. Perhaps she had come to the city only to sign the divorce papers. Silas must have seen my reaction, or perhaps the tears that filled my eyes, because he quickly said, “I’m not giving up, yet, Violet. I have another idea.”

  “Would you care to come inside?”

  “Actually, it’s such a nice evening I’d rather sit out here, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right.” I sat down again, moving over to make room for him on the steps beside me. His face looked freshly shaved, and he
smelled as though he had lavished a great deal of aftershave on himself. I wondered if his efforts were for my sake. Might he propose marriage to me too? The steps were not very wide, and I felt his shoulders brush against mine when he sat down.

  “How did you know where to look for my mother?”

  “I know a lot of people in this city who get around … if you know what I mean.” He gently nudged my ribs for emphasis. “I have my ways. “

  “I would love to hear about them. Solving mysteries fascinates me. I used to read True Crime Stories and The Illustrated Police News.”

  “That’s pretty unusual reading material for a proper young lady like yourself. I’m surprised you’d go for that sort of thing.”

  “One of my favorite books was Allan Pinkerton’s biography.”

  “Is that right?”

  I tried to read his expression, but his face was turned away, and I couldn’t see his features in the fading twilight. “Have you heard of Mr. Pinkerton’s detective agency, Silas?”

  “Who hasn’t? I’ll wager they’re the best crime-fighters in the country. But back to your mother …”

  His reluctance to discuss Mr. Pinkerton seemed highly suspicious and should have served as a warning to me to have nothing more to do with him. No doubt Pinkerton’s men were hot on Silas’ trail at this very moment. They were famous for tracking down notorious criminals. But I needed Silas’ help.

  “Yes? What about my mother?”

  “Sometimes women take back their maiden names after they’re divorced. I just thought that your mother might have done the same thing. Do you know what her maiden name was?”

  “I have it written down. It’s upstairs. Shall I go get it?”

  “It might help.”

  He stood, offering me his hand to help me up. A jolt passed from his hand to mine as I gripped it, traveling up my arm and giving me the same sensation I’d once had after accidentally striking my funny bone. I raced upstairs, my arm tingling, and dug out my journal from beneath my mattress. Thank goodness I’d had the good sense to copy down my mother’s full name from her signature on the divorce papers along with the now-worthless address. I ripped out a blank page and copied her full name on it then carried the paper down to Silas.