Through a Glass, Darkly

by Charlotte Miller

  Walter Eason set the earpiece of his telephone into its cradle and settled back into his chair, folding his hands together on the desk before him as he considered Janson and Elise through gray eyes that showed no feeling. His thick white eyebrows, meeting over the bridge of his nose, were drawn down into a scowl, displaying the only emotion that showed on his ruddy face—he believed the rumors about Sissy; he had already made that quite clear, and he was not willing to listen to anything that either of them might say in the girl’s defense.

  “The spectacle you made of yourself before the Baptist church yesterday was uncalled for,” he said, his eyes now on Elise alone. “I realize the gossip about this girl has gotten out of hand, but it is nothing more than what she has brought on herself.”

  “But, she hasn’t done anything,” Elise said, interrupting him, and Janson saw her knot her hands together in her lap. “The things they’re saying are all—”

  “Mrs. Sanders, I know you do not believe—”

  “It is nothing but a lie, started by Cassandra Price and that mother of hers. Sissy would never—”

  “You cannot accuse someone of something like that without proof!” His voice rose slightly as he stared at Elise.

  “They’ve been accusin’ Sissy of all kind’a things without proof,” Janson said, drawing Eason’s attention to him.

  “I want that girl out of this village by tomorrow.” Eason’s temper was growing, his face becoming only redder. “I will not have a girl like her in this village; she’s a bad example to the girls and nothing but a temptation to the boys. Send her back to her grandparents, or to a place for girls like her where they can make arrangements for the child—”

  “She ain’t gonna have no baby, an’ she’s better off here where people’ll see that. If she leaves now, th’ talk’ll just keep on—”

  “This is not a request. She leaves the village by tomorrow.”

  There was silence for a moment. “An’, if she don’t leave?”

  Eason stared at him. “Then you’ll all leave.” The words were quiet, the eyes that Janson stared into absolutely unrelenting. Either Sissy left to return to Tom and Deborah Sanders in the country, or left the county altogether, leaving the rumors behind her to fester and grow so that she could never escape them, or Janson would lose his job, they would lose the mill house, and they would all have to leave the village. Either way, Sissy would be away from the good, God-fearing people of the mill village—and Walter Eason was willing to cost a man his livelihood, and a family their home, to assure that.

  “That ain’t very fair, is it. Either Sissy leaves us, when she ain’t done nothin’ t’ have t’ leave for, or we all have t’ leave, just because of th’ lies spread by one girl an’ her mother—”

  “I have already told you that I will not listen to unfounded rumors in this!”

  “Damn it, what do you think th’ rumors about Sissy are!” Janson demanded, leaning forward in his chair.

  “I will not have profanity in this office!”

  Elise reached out and took hold of Janson’s arm, her fingers digging into his skin through his shirt sleeve, silencing him before he could speak. When he looked at her he found her staring at Walter Eason, and, after a moment, Eason brought his eyes to her as well.

  “Sissy didn’t even know until today exactly what it was she was being accused of doing,” Elise said, very quietly, her fingers digging even deeper into Janson’s arm to keep him silent. “She is nothing but a sweet child—you believe everyone else so easily, why can’t you at least listen to us? She’s just an innocent girl; there is no baby, and she hasn’t done any of the things that everyone is accusing her of—can’t you at least consider that?” Her fingers dug more firmly into Janson’s arm, but he already knew not to speak—he could see that Walter Eason was considering for the first time the possibility that what she was saying might be true, the old man’s eyes not once leaving her.

  Eason sat back after a moment, his eyes moving from Elise, to Janson, and then back again, and Janson felt Elise release the painful grip on his arm.

  After a long moment Walter Eason cleared his throat, seeming to have come to a decision. He did not respond to Elise, but brought his eyes to Janson. “Have the girl examined by Dr. Thrasher. If he says she’s—” his eyes moved quickly toward Elise and back again, “still as she should be, then—”

  “You cain’t ask a lady t’—” For a moment Janson could not even think of what he had been about to say. “You cain’t expect a unmarried girl t’ let a doctor or nobody else—no!” He looked at Elise, seeing her cheeks coloring, then looked back to Walter Eason. “No, we ain’t gonna ask her t’—”

  “Yes, you will,” a strong female voice came from behind them and Janson turned to see his grandmother standing in the doorway. One hand held the heavy wooden door back and the other held to Sissy’s hand as the girl stood beside her.

  “Mrs. Sanders, I don’t recall asking you into this office.” Walter Eason stared at her, the scowl deepening on his face.

  “You didn’t have t’ ask me, I come on my own,” Deborah Sanders said, staring at him. “Ain’t none of them things bein’ said about my girl true, an’ if it takes a doctor t’ prove it, then we’ll go see a doctor—you won’t go ruinin’ my girl’s name in this county. Ain’t nobody goin’ t’ go ruinin’ my girl’s name—”

  The rumors were false, and Elise knew that it would be a long time before some of the good, church-going folk of the village would forgive Sissy for not being exactly what they had accused her of being, and her family for somehow being able to prove it. Sissy was allowed to return to school, and the entire affair was dropped as far as the mill was concerned, though Sissy seemed forever uneasy around Mrs. Cunningham after that.

  Elise tried to explain the things that had been said, but that only seemed to embarrass Sissy more, and so they all tried to leave it behind them and go on. Months passed and it became evident that Sissy was not with child. Many of the people in the village who had gossiped so diligently, who had almost ruined a young girl’s life, almost cost a man work and a family income and shelter, now were outwardly considerate to Sissy, while at the same time avoiding her as much as they possibly could. Helene and Cassandra Price, however, as well as Tim’s mother, Irene, and to a lesser extent his father, shunned Sissy and the entire Sanders family as completely as when the rumors had reigned supreme. They, and so many others, had been accused of gossipmongering, and had been proven of it, and had even been dressed down by Reverend Satterwhite from his pulpit once Walter Eason had suggested the very sermon topic—they would not readily forgive anyone who showed the stains on their robes.

  Elise had discovered she was pregnant again before spring was over, and, though she found herself wishing it had not happened so soon, she also found herself hoping for a girl this time. As the months passed, she started to spend more time at her handiwork, gaining skill at doing things she had once hated so badly to learn and do—sewing, tatting, knitting, embroidery, making lovely things for the new baby, and quickly becoming known in the village for what she could do with a needle and thread or a tatting shuttle. Before long other women in the village began to ask her to make something for a child or a grandchild, or for the ladies themselves, and, to her surprise, offered to pay her for the work.

  At first Janson objected loudly and vocally to her earning money—she could accept jams and jellies, or baked goods, or home-canned foods in exchange, she was told, but nothing more. The fact that any number of women in the village worked in the mill just as their husbands did, and that his own mother and his grandmother worked just as hard on the land as did their husbands, while at the same time keeping up a house and raising children and cooking three meals a day, still did not lessen the impact of Elise working and making money—he did not like it, and he told her so. He was the man in the family, and he would not have her working. She could make things for ot
her ladies she knew, he told her, if she wanted to and if the ladies supplied her the material, and if they wanted to give her jams or jellies in exchange, then that would be fine—to which Elise asked him if he thought she was a fool, because only a fool would turn down money if it was offered to her.

  He refused to allow her to use her earnings toward household expenses, or even to add it to their store of savings for his land, telling her to save it or spend it as she liked, but that it was all her own—and so she afforded herself a few store-bought things for Henry and for the new baby, and nice material to make new dresses for herself and for Sissy. Then on impulse she had her hair, which had grown out more than she liked, bobbed into the newest style and done at the beauty parlor on Main Street, though Janson had said he liked her hair longer and hoped she would let it grow out even more—she was pregnant, and now that she was past the nausea that had plagued the first months even worse than it had with Henry, she was in the mood to “do something,” she told him.

  She felt foolishly happy over the extravagance of the new dresses and hairstyle, and terribly proud that she had earned the money for them on her own—she even had her own small hoard of savings that she counted and fussed over just as badly as Janson fussed over the savings for his land. They were both absolutely miserly toward those two treasures they had hidden in the kitchen. Janson’s savings seemed such a fortune to her now, and they had both begun to fret over it, afraid someone could come in and take it from the house when they were gone, until finally Janson took it, and her savings as well, to the bank up on Main Street just to relieve their minds. There was still a long way to go before they would have enough to buy back his land—but it would be so awful to have to start again, and it made Janson and Elise both sleep better knowing that their hard-fought savings lay safe in the local bank until the day it could help them make that dream come true.

  It was a good time for Janson, Elise, and their family. The doubles he often worked took him from Elise and Henry much more than Elise would have liked, but they gave them extra money that could go toward the dream of his land, and also some left over even for the occasional treat. For the first time since they married, they did not have to fret over each dime, although it now was a habit. There were more new clothes for Henry, instead of mostly hand-me-downs from Janson’s relatives and things Elise had made for him, a new dress Elise ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, a coat for Janson, and new things for Sissy as well. Everyone seemed to be spending, and most buying on credit—but not the Sanders family: “Cash money only,” Janson had said, and that was how they dealt.

  Herbert Hoover had come into office earlier in the year promising to wipe out poverty, that there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Hoover said the country had a brilliant future ahead, and Elise could little argue with the thought. She knew the farmers in the countryside, the sharecroppers and landowners alike, were having a difficult time, many losing their land and the farms they had worked for generations because of low crop prices and high surpluses of farm products, but in the village the future looked better than ever. The mill was working three full shifts with doubles, and even triples, available for most anyone who would work them. There was plenty of merchandise in the stores, with money to buy with and credit welcome from all. Credit—that seemed what everyone was dealing on. People bought things they never thought to afford, and they bought them on credit, looking only toward the brighter days ahead. There seemed to be a buying spree going on, and it seemed everyone was getting rich, their little savings in the bank making Elise feel rich even though she had once spent more money on clothes in one day than was in their entire hard-earned bank account.

  As October swept in, it seemed to Elise that the entire world was single-mindedly at work to make more and more money. She heard talk in the stores uptown, even in the small grocery in the village and the drug store, of investing and stocks—a bull market, they called it—talk she little understood except to know there was money to be made hand-over-fist investing in the market, and that everyone but their family seemed to be making that money. She tried to talk Janson into investing, but he refused—he did not understand how it worked, and did not like the idea of handing money over to someone in hopes that it would somehow grow to be more money, he said. He preferred it in the bank where it was nice and safe—anything that he did not understand might try to take their money from them, and, though he did not understand the bank and how it took money from some people and let other people borrow it, Elise knew it felt safer to him than some market and things called stocks that he knew nothing about.

  As October of 1929 swept to a close, it seemed as if the entire world was investing in the stock market, from the banker in town to the meat cutter in the village, from the wealthy widow who went to the First Methodist Church on Main Street, to the man who worked beside Janson in the card room at the mill. People went into debt to buy stocks and invest in the market; they bought on credit as they never had before. They spent, they consumed, they drank illegal liquor and spat in the face of Prohibition, celebrating in a mad, giddy rush the brilliant future that lay ahead. Herbert Hoover was at the reins of the country, ready to lead them all on to even better times. There was prosperity and recklessness, a seemingly mad party as the month drew to a close.

  But after Tuesday, October 29, 1929, that frivolous, giddy world would never be the same again, not for Elise, or for anyone else who spun through those final dizzying days—that was the day the stock market crashed.

  That was also the day that William Whitley ended his own life.

  Chapter Six

  To many people, it seemed as if the world had come to an end that Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. In that one day desperate speculators sold over sixteen million shares of stock in an attempt to get out before the great bull market would collapse, but by then the end was inevitable. By the close of the year the government would estimate that the Crash had cost investors forty billion dollars. Values of stocks listed on the NYSE had dropped precipitously—and panic had set in to stay. People had gone into debt to buy stocks, fortunes were wiped out, jobs were lost forever, and suicide reigned supreme in a nation of people reeling from the greatest stock market catastrophe of all time.

  But that day that would live forever in the minds of most of those who had seen it had become even more personal to Elise—on that dark October night, when her father realized that he had lost everything in the Crash that had ruined so many others, William Whitley put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

  It was devastating to learn that her father had ended his own life, and Elise’s mind was stunned at the knowledge. She was unable to think, unable to feel, unable even to realize the import of the words that came to her over that crackling telephone wire at the village grocery that Wednesday morning—her father was dead. He had killed himself—and she was stunned to find herself shaken though dry-eyed at the knowledge.

  William Whitley had gambled everything, and he had lost. Old Mr. Bolt had passed away a few months before and Bolt’s widow had at last sold William the share in the Goodwin cotton mill that William had wanted for so long. Then Hiram Cooper, his son, J. C., now married to Phyllis Ann Bennett, having no interest in coming into the management of the mill, had sold William his share as well, giving William at last what he had most wanted for so many years—he owned the mill, owned it outright, but now had no one to pass it on to. Stan was more interested in books than business; Alfred had been dead these two and a half years; Bill had left town without a word to anyone; and Elise was off in Alabama with her half-breed and her part-Indian brat—all of his children were gone to him, though Stan still lived under his roof.

  William had mortgaged his home, lands, and businesses to purchase the mill and the mill village, and then had taken loans against the mill itself when he had seen what the market was doing—with the way stocks were climbing, he would soon have the mortgages off his proper
ty and would be free of debt. He would make a fortune on the stocks when he sold—and perhaps he could interest Stan in the mill. Books were nothing for the boy to be interested in. Books were nothing—

  He nervously watched the market sag in September, listening with gritted teeth to assurances that the slump was only temporary—and put more money into the now lower-valued stocks, assured that they would rise again to recoup his losses and bring him the money to satisfy the liens against his property.

  Yet the market sagged again, the decline becoming even more rapid as October wore on—but he could not sell now. He took another loan against the mill and village to satisfy the margin calls on his stocks—he would lose too much if he pulled out now. There were loans to be repaid, business to conduct—surely the market had hit bottom, and there was one last chance to buy in—and buy in he did. Scraping together the final dollars he had, borrowing even more, he sank everything into the market—it had to go up. It could not drop any further—it would rise and rise. He would sell at a profit when the shares reached the pinnacle again.

  But stocks continued to decline: General Electric was dropping, Montgomery Ward was dropping; United States Steel, Radio, Auburn Chase—all dropping. He had gone too far; if he sold now he would be ruined. He could only hold on. Wait. And pray.

  The panic set in. Everyone was selling before the bottom could fall out. Fortunes were lost, prices dropped lower and lower, and calls for margins to be repaid went out—and William watched in horror as his world was wiped away. It had to get better. Prices had to go up. He could not lose everything—he was William Whitley—people were panicking. Hadn’t the big bankers stepped in and formed a pool to support prices? Lamont of J. P. Morgan and Company, Mitchell of National City Bank, Wiggin of Chase National, Potter of Guarantee Trust, Prosser of Bankers Trust—men of such power and wisdom in the financial world could wield wonders. The market would recover and everyone would laugh at the silly panic they had allowed themselves to get into.