In the bottom drawer, she found a long, thin, velvet-covered box that probably held Hattie’s jewelry. Picking it up, she turned to give it to Laura, pausing when she saw that the young woman was silently weeping, holding a bundle of letters to her breast.
“Oh my dear, I am so sorry.” She moved over to sit on the bed next to Laura, giving her a hug. “Can I do anything to make this process less painful? Maybe we should just bring the box with her letters home. You can sort through them more slowly and send them as a separate package. I am sure her parents won’t mind.”
“No, it won’t get any easier if I put it off.” Laura pulled away from Annie. “But I will definitely keep my own letters to her. Do you mind if I put them in your purse?”
“No, not at all.” Annie picked up a stack of letters tied with a red ribbon. She said, “What about these? They seem to be from her parents.”
“Just make sure that there aren’t any other letters in that group, from me for instance, and then put them in the trunk. Oh, that is Hattie’s jewelry box.” Laura took the box from Annie and opened it. “Look, here is the locket I gave her for her last birthday. I will definitely keep that. But these garnet earrings and the matching brooch were her grandmother’s and should go back home. I will just keep the locket and this pair of silver earrings she bought to celebrate her graduation. I bought a stick pin of the same design…I know she would want me to have it.”
More tears flowed. Finally, Laura shook herself like a puppy coming out of a rain shower, and she jumped up from the bed, saying, “I will not moon over a bunch of trinkets. Annie, could you put the jewelry box in the trunk and then sort the rest of the letters in piles based on who they are from? It makes more sense for me to go through the books and papers in that valise by the window.” Without waiting for a reply, she went over and knelt down by a large leather suitcase and began to pick through what looked like a jumble of school texts and novels.
Annie, curious, leaned over the box of letters and began to take out the stacks of envelopes of various sizes, each tied neatly by a different colored ribbon. There was a fairly large group of letters from someone named Eugenia Wilks, evidently one of Hattie’s cousins. They could go into the trunk. She went through a number of greeting and Christmas cards, taking out those that came from Laura. Then she took out a packet that had a good many different-sized objects in it, running from business-sized envelopes, ticket stubs, handbills, and a thick stack of small envelopes that turned out to be from Andrew Russell.
Annie looked over at Laura, who had created two different piles of books and was now looking through some papers. She said, “I’ve found Russell’s correspondence and what looks like keepsakes from him. What do you want me to do with them?”
“If you don’t mind, put them with my letters,” Laura said flatly. “I will give them to Mr. Russell but not before I have read them. I know that you and Nate feel that I am judging him too harshly, but if he is not the blackguard I think him, let him prove himself with his own words. I need to understand why she would have taken up with him, be willing to give up her plans, our plans.”
“I know, dear,” Annie replied. “But what if you don’t find what you are looking for? What if it is as simple as they loved each other, and they decided to get married right away when they discovered she was pregnant? Then, after a tragic accident, she died.”
“But how could she have gotten pregnant! That’s what I can’t understand, Annie,” Laura cried out. “Not the Hattie I knew. While marriage wasn’t in her plans, she thought that women like Victoria Woodhull who talked about ‘free love’ and having relations outside of the bonds of marriage were either addlebrained romantics or just making up an excuse for fornication. How could she have changed that much?”
Annie paused, trying to find words that might help, wishing that Laura’s mother were here to comfort and guide her daughter. “Laura, I don’t know how much your mother has talked about…marital relations…”
“Marital relations? Isn’t that just the point? This was sexual intercourse, not marital relations,” Laura said. “I’m sorry to be so unladylike. It is difficult enough for me to believe that she ‘fell in love’ so quickly, but I just can’t understand why she would risk everything, for what? I think he must have pressured her into having relations with him. That’s the proof I am looking for in those letters.”
“I don’t know what happened between Hattie and Russell; we may never know,” Annie said. “But I have learned through painful experience that when it comes to relationships between a man and a woman, only the people involved really know the full story.”
She paused, then continued. “Before we married, John was a perfect gentleman. He courted me with flowers and sweet words. Never even tried to kiss me. But it turned out he was a brute, who, after marriage, had no respect for me or my person. Our marital relations were never…loving.” Annie closed her eyes, overwhelmed momentarily by the terrible memories.
She then felt a tentative touch by Laura, who had moved over to sit on the bed beside her and was staring at her with concern.
“Annie, I am so sorry. Does Nate know?”
“No. He knows I was unhappy but not the details, and I hope never to have to tell him. What good would it do? John’s dead; he can’t hurt me anymore.” Annie reached over and clasped Laura’s hand. “But you see, I know in my bones that your brother is different. He would never force me to do something I didn’t want to do. Perhaps even more importantly, he won’t let me do something that I might later regret. You see how careful he is of my reputation.”
Laura looked surprised and said, “Won’t let you? What do you mean?”
Annie felt that she had gone beyond her depth but also felt she had to try to explain because it might help Laura make peace with Hattie’s pregnancy. “I guess that is the point I was trying to make about Hattie and Andrew Russell,” she said. “It has only been recently, with your brother, that I have discovered how intoxicating falling in love can be, how it can sweep away rules of propriety, if only momentarily.”
Shaking her head, Laura’s voice was tinged with disapproval when she said, “Well, I don’t understand why the two of you aren’t planning on getting married if you both feel that way.”
“Well, he hasn’t asked me again,” Annie said, defensively.
“Again? Annie, you aren’t telling me he proposed to you and you turned him down?” Laura was clearly shocked.
“He did this fall, and we had an awful row. He made the mistake of saying he wanted to marry me to take care of me, so that I could sell the boarding house and never have to work as Madam Sibyl again.”
“Oh stupid, stupid Nate. I can just hear him.” Laura shook her head. “Don’t you hate it when he gets paternalistic, tries to sound like my father? I just laugh at him.”
“Well I am afraid I shouted at him, but later we agreed to take our time, get to know each other better.” Annie’s discomfort over the direction this conversation had taken increased, so she said, “Promise me you won’t speak of this…or anything else I have said today…to Nate. I really shouldn’t have confided in you; it puts you, as his sister, in an awkward position.”
“Annie, I feel honored that you have been honest with me,” Laura said. “But I promise; I won’t say a word. I don’t know what I would have done, would do, without your support. But I won’t promise not to ring his neck if he doesn’t succeed in making you my sister-in-law sometime in the near future.”
Annie gave her another quick hug. She then said, “We need to finish up here. I don’t know about you, but my feet are beginning to turn into blocks of ice. Are you almost done with the valise?”
“Yes I…Annie, what was that?” Laura stood up quickly and went over to the door. She leaned her head against it and listened. Then she opened up the door and took a step into the corridor. “No one there,” she said, coming back into the room. “It must have been just one of the other boarders coming or going. It’s been as quiet as a tomb; I
had forgotten anyone else lived here.”
Annie felt a sudden sense of urgency to complete their sad task and leave. She said, “It’s getting late. Let’s finish up as quickly as we can. I would like to be heading home well before it gets dark.”
Laura went over to the chair by the window where she had stacked some books and papers. “This shouldn’t take long. There are a few textbooks and novels of hers that I don’t own, so I will want to keep them. I wonder if it would be all right if I kept the valise. We need some way of carrying everything home.”
Annie nodded. “That seems a good idea. You can always send it back to her parents later if they want it. I am almost done with the box. There seems to be a thick envelope at the bottom with no address on it.”
Opening up the flap on the business-sized envelope, Annie removed several smaller pieces of lined composition paper. When she unfolded the first, she was surprised to see it held nothing but a few lines written in large black capital letters. Assuming that this was some keepsake from one of the children Hattie had taught, she was about to hand it over to Laura when she suddenly took in the meaning of the words.
The note read:
DEAR MISS WILKS
YOU WHORE YOU DONT DESERVE
TO TEACH CHILDREN
A CONCERNED CITIZEN
*****
When Annie and Laura got home from Hattie’s boarding house, Nate was waiting for them. He didn’t usually come to visit her twice in a weekend, but he’d felt he needed to check in to see how Laura was doing after her trip to pack up her friend’s things. Once again, she and Nate and Laura were meeting in Madam Sibyl’s small parlor in order for them to have some privacy.
“See, there are three of them,” Annie said to Nate, showing him the anonymous notes she’d found in Hattie’s box of correspondence. “All saying pretty much the same thing, although this last one is more explicit, indicating that if Hattie didn’t quit teaching, something bad would happen. See this phrase, ‘Go back to where you came from or else.’ What they don’t do is mention Russell, at all, but we must assume that it was her relationship with him that prompted the writer’s accusations.”
As Nate looked at the notes, Annie asked, “Does this sound at all like it might have come from the same person that wrote the accusatory letters to the school board about Mr. Emory and his friend, Mrs. Anderson?”
“Well, the suggestion of impropriety is similar, but, from Emory’s description, the letters sent to the school board were very businesslike. These look as if they came from a child, not the words, of course, but the handwriting.”
“I wonder how they were delivered to her? There didn’t seem to be any envelopes. Could they have been put in her mailbox at Clement Grammar? How difficult would that be, Laura?”
“It wouldn’t be hard at all for another teacher, and the door isn’t locked so it wouldn’t be impossible for a student to slip in,” said Laura, who had been pacing up and down in front of the fireplace. “A student could always say they had been sent to put a note in one of the teacher’s boxes; I’ve seen that happen. But I can’t imagine a student, or a teacher, writing anything so awful.”
“Seems to me that if the letter to the school board and Hattie are by the same person, he or she was being very clever,” Annie said. “The school board might dismiss crude notes like this as the product of a diseased mind, but they would take seriously something more professionally written. Yet if you were Hattie and received this note, the very crudeness of it would be frightening. I can testify that the purpose of an anonymous note like this is to ignite fear in the recipient.” Annie looked at Nate, who nodded his understanding.
“Poor Hattie, how upsetting this must have been,” said Laura. “Why would anyone do such a thing to her? I mean, I understand that the purpose was to get her to quit teaching, but why? Unless this was part of Russell’s plan to hound her into marrying him.” Laura picked up the poker beside the fireplace and thrust it at the logs, causing them to collapse in a shower of sparks.
Annie looked over at Nate and shrugged, not knowing what to say about Laura’s continued determination to blame everything on Russell. Finally, she said, “It seems too coincidental that two different people would be trying to disparage the morals of city school teachers, despite the difference in the letters’ styles. I can’t help but wonder if anyone else has received a similar note.”
Nate, agreeing, said, “I will definitely make sure that Emory, or Mrs. Anderson, hasn’t been withholding any information. They both told me they hadn’t received anything directly, but I can imagine that if Mrs. Anderson got something along these lines, she might not admit it.”
He then walked over to Laura and put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to look at him before he went on. “I can only imagine how difficult all this is. But it is possible that your friend was the victim of a political or personal campaign to smear certain administrators in the school system. Russell is, after all, a Vice Principal. The letter Emory showed me accused the Vice Principal of Girls’ High of hiring Mrs. Anderson out of favoritism. Didn’t you tell us that Hattie suggested that she quit teaching at Clement Grammar because she didn’t want Russell to be accused of the same thing?”
Laura frowned, then sighed. “I guess so. I just wish she had confided the truth to me. I need to look at all this more objectively. Hattie always said…Hattie always said that I needed to be careful not to try to fit my facts to prove my point but let the facts lead me to my conclusions. She had such a scientific mind.”
Annie interjected, “Well, I think it is much too soon to come to any conclusions.” She then turned to Nate and said, “Laura has granted me permission to read Russell’s letters first. You can be sure I will be looking for any evidence that he knew about these poisonous notes or Hattie’s pregnancy.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of you reading the man’s letters,” Nate responded. “But given the circumstances, I suppose someone must. I would be interested in the timing. If he refers to when Hattie received the notes or if the letters reveal when in the term Miss Wilks decided to quit, we might be able to see if it corresponds at all with the anonymous letters that were sent to the board this fall. I will also get Emory to investigate if any other people in authority got similar letters. It is possible, for example, that the Clement Grammar Principal got a letter making an accusation about Hattie and Russell but simply ignored it.”
“Oh, my heavens,” Laura said, her voice rising. “If these notes aren’t from Russell but some sort of broader attack against teachers or administrators, then it is possible that the person who wrote these letters continued to pressure Hattie in some fashion. That last note suggested something bad would happen if Hattie didn’t ‘go away.’ Hattie quit teaching, but she certainly didn’t go away…and then she died.”
Chapter Twenty
Wednesday afternoon, January 21, 1880
"With other members of the Committee on Salaries, I consider that a reduction of 30 per cent on the salaries of primary teachers would tend to destroy the usefulness of the School Department. Take away our good teachers and replace them by inexperienced ones, and the interior towns will reap the benefit of it, and their gain will be our loss" ––San Francisco School Board Director McDonnell, San Francisco Chronicle, 1879
“Miss Dawson, Johnny is jiggling in his seat so I can’t do my essay properly,” Betsy Clarke complained, looking smug. Since her desk, like most school desks, was attached to the seat in front of her, occupied by the fidgety John Jenkins, this had become a constant refrain.
“Mr. Jenkins, would you please get up and move to the chair next to Miss Blaine; take your paper and pen with you. And, Miss Clarke, I will expect that the second half of your essay will show extraordinary improvement in both content and form. Now class, back to work.”
Laura smiled at Kitty Blaine, who got Johnny settled and back to work in short order. There were now forty-two students in her seventh grade class, down from the fifty who
were enrolled in the fall, and this meant that she had been able to ask the janitor, Mr. Ferguson, to remove the entire back row of desks. This left just two extra desks by the window at the back, where more often than not Johnny Jenkins sat under the watchful eye of her practice teacher. At first, Laura had made the mistake of being sympathetic to Betsy Clarke’s complaints; now she realized they were based primarily on the petite blonde’s desire to be the center of attention.
As the students returned to their work, she looked out over their bowed heads and realized that the more she got to know their distinct personalities, the more affection she had for them. The challenge was to figure out a way to reward their good qualities and not reinforce the less-than-admirable ones. She’d found, for example, the less fuss she made when Betsy complained, the better. On the other hand, the girl’s need for attention could be directed into getting her to work harder on perfecting her handwriting, which was often sloppy, whether Johnny was jiggling or not. And then there was Zachary Martin, who had grown so tall that he could barely contort his legs enough to fit under the rigid desk. He handled his embarrassment over how clumsy he’d become by acting the class clown. Annie had discovered, by accident, that the more she asked him to use his height to help her by opening up the top windows or taking down the globe from the top of the supply cabinet, the less he engaged in any tomfoolery. He was also very gentle with the smaller children, not at all a bully, so she had put him in charge of taking up the rear when they all walked to assembly.
The topic of bullies made her think of Buck, and this of course led to Seth Timmons. She was forced to reassess her opinion of him, once again, when she discovered letters from him among the correspondence she had brought home. She had left Russell’s letters and the anonymous nasty notes to Annie, but she read the six letters from Seth that she found when she went through the letters to Hattie. Two of the letters were written last summer, revealing that he had been working on a cattle ranch down near Los Angeles. These letters were very short, primarily asking after Hattie’s health, telling her about his success in solving a math problem that she had given him to work on, and commenting on the second volume of Martineau’s translation of the Frenchman Comte’s work on positivism, which he was reading in the evenings. Laura wasn’t sure whether she was more nonplussed to discover he was reading such a difficult work or that he seemed to agree with Comte’s views about human society. She couldn’t imagine how the men who worked with him would have reacted to a ranch hand who read Enlightenment philosophers.
Bloody Lessons: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery Page 14