Blythewood

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  “I’m ready to go,” I said. She linked her arm through mine and together we walked out of the Bellevue Pavilion for the Insane.

  4

  AS MISS MOORHEN had promised, there was an automobile waiting for us just outside the massive iron gates of Bellevue—a long sleek silvery automobile with a figure of a winged woman at its prow—but it wasn’t full of Pinkerton detectives. A uniformed driver sat at the wheel and a nervous-looking young man in a rumpled linen suit paced in front of the car, raking his hands through his hair and muttering to himself.

  When he saw us coming out of the gates he rushed toward us, looking as though he were going to fling his arms around Miss Moorhen, but then satisfied his urges by flapping his arms up in the air once and grabbing the ends of his hair. The hair and plain, homely face looked familiar. It was the law student who had flirted with Tillie the morning of the fire.

  “Another thirty seconds and I was going to call the police,” he told Miss Moorhen. “I thought you’d been swallowed up by that damned place.”

  “We very nearly were, Mr. Greenfeder,” Miss Moorhen said, casting a look back over her shoulder and shuddering. It was the first sign she’d shown that she was afraid, and it made me afraid, too. I looked back at the great hulking mass of the hospital and noticed that the sky above it was filled with crows. One landed on the iron gates and cawed at us.

  “Let’s get going before they change their minds and come after us,” Miss Moorhen said.

  Mr. Greenfeder opened the door for us and we climbed into the plush interior of the automobile—the first one I’d ever been inside. Mr. Greenfeder sat on a jump seat across from us and spent the first few minutes of the drive anxiously peering out the back window. As did Miss Moorhen. I looked back and saw the lone crow on the gate flap back toward the hospital.

  After we’d turned east on Twenty-Ninth Street, Miss Moorhen and Mr. Greenfeder settled back in their seats and switched their attentive gazes to me.

  “Well!” Mr. Greenfeder slapped his knees with his hands. “We found you at last! It’s been quite the Herculean task!”

  “Yes,” Miss Moorhen agreed. “I’d never have succeeded without your help, Mr. Greenfeder, and without your assurances that she was alive.” Turning to me, she said, “You see, your name was listed with the dead. That is how it first came to your grandmother’s attention that you were at the Triangle Waist factory on the day of the fire. Imagine our grief, to be looking for you for so long only to think we had lost you in such a horrible tragedy. Mrs. Hall sent me down to the piers where the bodies had been laid out for identification.”

  Miss Moorhen shuddered, the feather on her hat trembling. “If I live to be a hundred I will never forget what I saw there. All those poor souls burnt or smashed to death—some no more than children! All victims to the rapacious greed and neglect of Misters Blanck and Harris.”

  “You blame the owners for the fire?” I asked.

  CAROL GOODMAN [ 37 “Not for starting it. They think it was a cutter carelessly tossing a cigarette into the scrap pile, but if there’d been an alarm system and the new water sprinklers the fire would have been put out. If the door hadn’t been locked and there had been an adequate fire escape most of the victims would have lived.” Miss Moorhen shook her head again.

  “They will stand trial for their conduct,” Mr. Greenfeder assured her. “They have been arraigned and charged with six counts of manslaughter.”

  “We shall see,” Miss Moorhen said. “Men like them often manage to evade their fates because of their money and their influence.”

  “The law will hold them accountable,” Mr. Greenfeder countered. “I’m sure of it.”

  Miss Moorhen held up a gloved hand. “Dearest Samuel, your faith in the law is admirable, exceeded only by your zeal to discover the truth.” She turned to me. “It was his insistence that the body identified as Avaline Hall was not yours that led us here today. I found him mourning beside the body of your friend, Miss Kupermann, which lay next to the poor unfortunate who had been identified as Avaline Hall. He told me that he had seen you the morning of the fire and that you were wearing a navy skirt, not black, and that your hair was chestnut, not brown. Remembering the color of your mother’s hair, I believed him.”

  “That’s the reason you believed me?” Mr. Greenfeder asked, aghast.

  Miss Moorhen smiled. “That and your obvious powers of observation. His description of the fire was so detailed and thorough, despite the obvious emotional impact it had had on him, that I felt sure he was right that the body in question had been misidentified. Also, he said that he had seen you on the pavement unconscious but unhurt after your fall. Though he could not explain how you could have fallen ten stories without injuring yourself.”

  I swallowed and waited anxiously for what would surely come next. Would they ask me to explain how I had survived? How could I do that without mentioning the boy with the wings?

  “I do have a theory about that,” Mr. Greenfeder said, holding up one finger as if proving a point before a jury. “When the ladder broke it swung against the side of the law building. The last thing I saw before being overcome by a gust of smoke was that young bloke who had saved so many girls making a mad dash toward you through the air. I thought for sure he must have died in his attempt, but I didn’t see him among the victims. I believe that when the ladder swung down against the law building you were thrown into a window and that the young fellow dived through that same window and then carried you down to the pavement. From there you must have been transported to the hospital—”

  “Where of course we took up our inquiries right away. We checked all the local hospitals, including Bellevue, but no patient fitting your description was listed among the wounded.”

  “They kept me hidden,” I said, anger replacing the craven fear I’d felt for so long. The thought that while Dr. Pritchard had been telling me that I had no living family, Miss Moorhen and Mr. Greenfeder had been searching for me turned my stomach. “But why?”

  Miss Moorhen looked anxiously at Mr. Greenfeder and sighed. “We don’t know,” she admitted, “but perhaps you witnessed something that would be incriminating to Misters Blanck and Harris.”

  “The scoundrels!” Mr. Greenfeder exclaimed. “You can be sure that I will continue investigating the connections between the owners of the Triangle Waist factory and Dr. Pritchard. I won’t rest until I find out why they held you against your will for so long.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Greenfeder,” I said, tears springing to my eyes at the unaccustomed kindness. “And thank you for all you did the day of the fire. You and your friends were very brave.”

  “I only wish I could have saved your friend Miss Kupermann. She was the one who was brave.” Mr. Greenfeder blushed, making him look suddenly very young, and glanced furtively at Miss Moorhen, who in turn blushed and looked out the window. Then he looked out the window, too, and clapped his hand to his forehead. “I forgot that I have to make an appearance in court. Could the driver let me off here?”

  Miss Moorhen signaled to the driver to stop at the corner of Twenty-Ninth Street and Madison Avenue. As he was getting out I thought of a question.

  “Mr. Greenfeder,” I called. “The boy who saved all those girls—have you seen him since the fire?”

  Mr. Greenfeder shook his head. “No, I’ve looked all over for him—even advertised in the papers so he could testify at the trial—but there’s been no sign of him.” He shook his head. “It’s like he vanished into the smoke. Sometimes I think I imagined him.” Then, with another furtive look at Agnes, he left.

  I watched Agnes watch him go, a faraway, dreamy look in her eyes, which I suspected wasn’t her habitual expression.

  “What a nice man,” I said as the car turned north on Madison Avenue.

  “Oh! Mr. Greenfeder is a fine young man!” she declared as adamantly as if I’d said the opposite. “In the months since the fire he has been tireless in his efforts to promote regulations to prevent such a tra
gedy from ever occurring again—motivated, I believe, by his . . . er, fondness for your friend Tillie. She must have been quite extraordinary.”

  “Yes, she was . . .” I began. I wanted to tell her that while Tillie was extraordinary, I wasn’t sure that she still held Mr. Greenfeder’s heart—not after seeing the way he had looked at Miss Moorhen. But I didn’t have a lot of experience telling girls that boys liked them, and before I could try it, Miss Moorhen shook herself briskly, like a bird shaking out wet feathers.

  “But enough of Mr. Greenfeder! You’ll want to know more about your situation, I imagine.”

  “My situation?”

  “Yes. I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking frankly, but I always find it’s best to lay all one’s cards on the table. Don’t you?”

  I swallowed and glanced nervously out the window. As we drove north the streets were decidedly less crowded than those downtown. “Fashionable people,” I recalled my mother telling me, “flee the city during the hot summer months.”

  My mother had always known such things—what grand hotels the rich visited in Europe, when the season began in New York, and which families were from “old money” and which were the nouveaux riches. I had always suspected that she came from a wealthy family, but the reality of entering one of the great mansions we were passing now on the wide deserted avenue—through the front door instead of the service entrance—was suddenly terrifying. What if my grandmother took one look at me and was so appalled by my disheveled appearance that she sent me back to the madhouse? It would be better to wind up on the streets.

  “I don’t expect anything from Mrs. Hall,” I said, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin. “Mother always said it was better to be a pauper than a slave to money.”

  “Evie was very proud,” Miss Moorhen said fondly. “A trait she inherited from her mother, I’m afraid. The two of them fought after your mother was expelled from Blythewood.”

  “My mother was expelled?”

  Miss Moorhen looked startled at my question. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that you didn’t know. Yes, your mother was expelled from Blythewood a month before her graduation. We were all shocked. No one ever knew why, but there were rumors that it had something to do with her going into the Blythe Wood, which was strictly off-limits. But it never made much sense to me that a girl of such accomplishments as Evangeline Hall would be expelled for such a trifling matter. Later, when I came to be employed by your grandmother and I learned that you had been born that following autumn . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and I realized she was leaving me to reach my own conclusions. It took me a few moments to do so. “Oh! You mean my mother was expelled because she was . . .” I searched through all the euphemisms but then heard my mother’s voice telling me it was always better to use the correct word. “Pregnant with me?”

  Miss Moorhen looked a little taken aback by my bluntness, but then patted my hand. “I want you to know I never thought any less of her for it. I’m sure she must have loved your father very much—whoever he was—and that there must have been a good reason why they couldn’t marry.” Her voice faltered when she saw my face color. “Oh my land, I’m sorry. I thought you knew. Evangeline was so forthright.”

  “I knew that my father had vanished before I was born, but I’d assumed . . .” My mother who had been so frank about everything else had never told me that she was not married. I wasn’t sure what was more shocking—the fact itself or that my mother had kept it from me.

  “Your mother was the most honorable woman I ever met,” Miss Moorhen averred fiercely. “You must never be ashamed of her.”

  I shook my head, unable to explain that I wasn’t ashamed of my mother. I was ashamed that I had been the cause of her expulsion from her beloved Blythewood. “And that’s the reason she has been estranged from her mother?” I asked.

  “I suppose so. Mrs. Hall will never speak of it, but I have watched her these last few years regret the pride that kept her separated from her only daughter. She was devastated when she heard of Evangeline’s death and became obsessed with finding you. She’s not so bad, Mrs. Hall. Only a bit lonely rattling around in that drafty mausoleum.”

  She gestured to a great glittering white sarcophagus that we had just pulled up in front of. It was one my mother and I had passed many times in the course of delivering hats to our wealthy clients, I realized, but not once had my mother given any hint that her own mother lived behind the spiked iron gate and ornately carved façade.

  “And set in her ways—the old ways.” Miss Moorhen’s ears were twitching beneath the brim of her hat and her voice betrayed an edge of anger. I wondered what the old ways had ever done to her. She tucked a stray curl under her hat and gave me a level look.

  “Part of the old ways is doing right by your blood relations. She’ll do right by you . . . or she’ll have my resignation.”

  I was so startled and touched by this fervid promise I wasn’t sure what to say. “Thank you, Miss Moorhen . . .” I began.

  “Call me Agnes,” she said, squeezing my hand. “We working girls have to stick together, don’t we?” Then she got out of the car and led the way up the marble steps between two marble bloodhounds. My skin prickled as I walked between them, as if they might pounce on me if I made a wrong move.

  At the top of the stairs a footman in black, red, and white livery held the door for us. We crossed the threshold onto a floor inlaid with black and white diamonds. A grand staircase rose beyond to a landing with a stained-glass window depicting a classically robed woman drawing an arrow back in her bow: Diana at the hunt. Well, at least all the stories mother told me will come in handy, I thought, noticing two more mythologically themed works of art in the foyer. A sculpture of another Diana—this one perfectly nude—stood at the center of a fountain. Her bow was aimed toward a second statue of a cowering boy being torn apart by wild dogs. The wild eyes of the boy looked up at me with an imploring expression that reminded me of someone. I stepped closer and saw that deer’s antlers sprang from the boy’s head.

  “Actaeon,” I said aloud, shocked by the brutality of the statue. “Diana punished him for seeing her naked and turned him into a deer. His own hunting hounds tore him apart.” I recalled now where I’d seen that expression before—on the face of the dark-eyed boy when he looked up at the crows massing above the roof of the Triangle Waist factory.

  “I see you’ve learned your mythology.”

  The voice, which came from beyond a set of open French doors, interrupted my thoughts. At a nod from Miss Moorhen, I passed through the doors into a long dim room. After the brightness of the foyer it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then another moment to locate among the tapestry-covered divans, purple satin chairs, tables covered with bric-a-brac, statuary, stuffed birds, and enough palm trees to shade a desert oasis, the woman who had spoken. It didn’t help that she was entirely dressed in black, in a dress so fitted that she appeared to be armored. Nor that she was so still she might have been one of the ebony statues of Moorish servants that knelt on either side of the fireplace before which she sat. Only the slight motion of her chin that made her jet earrings tremble distinguished her from the décor. “Here she is, Mrs. Hall,” Agnes said, giving me a little shove with the tip of her umbrella. “Mr. Greenfeder was right. They were keeping her at Bellevue in a private ward.”

  I made my way toward Mrs. Hall—I couldn’t quite think of her as my grandmother—my ankles wobbling on the thick carpet. Her eyes, which glittered as darkly as her jet beads, remained fixed on me. When I was a few feet away she raised one gloved hand, palm out, and motioned for me to stop. Then she lifted a lorgnette, which was attached to a long chain around her neck, to her eyes and looked me up and down.

  “Are you sure you found the right girl, Miss Moorhen?” she asked in a lofty, imperious voice. “This one doesn’t look a bit like Evie.” At the mention of my mother’s name her chin seemed to quiver the tiniest bit. “She’s so . . . thin.”


  “I suspect they didn’t feed her very well at Bellevue,” Agnes, who had crept up silently behind me, replied tartly. “But I’m quite sure this is Evie’s daughter. Look at her hair, Mrs. Hall. It’s just like Evie’s.”

  Agnes gave me another little push and I found myself inches from Mrs. Hall. She lifted a trembling hand toward my hair and fingered a lock that had come loose. Her mouth crumpled for a moment, then she looked up into my eyes. “Hm . . . it’s duller than Evie’s, but yes, I see the resemblance now. She certainly doesn’t have Evangeline’s figure. These clothes are hanging on her like rags.”

  “Do you want me to make an appointment with Miss Janeway?”

  Mrs. Hall sniffed. “You might as well. She’s too tall to fit into Evie’s old things. Go on now,” she ordered Agnes, who gave my hand a squeeze before she left the room. “Tell Carrie she must be fit in immediately so as to have suitable clothing for her interview.”

  My interview? As Mrs. Hall looked back up at me, lorgnette poised on her long narrow nose, I took courage from Agnes’s hand squeeze.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m exactly the same height as my mother. She measured me on my birthday.” The thought that it had been the last birthday I’d ever spend with my mother sapped all the courage out of me and froze my throat.

  Mrs. Hall lowered her lorgnette and stared at me. “Well, perhaps it is I who have shrunk. You look like a giant looming there. Sit down before I strain my neck looking up at you.”

  She waved her lorgnette toward a footstool beside her feet. I sank down on it, next to the statue of the kneeling Moor whose eyes seemed to say, “Watch out or you’ll end up like me, frozen for all eternity at Medusa’s feet.” The notion that all the statues in the room were live creatures petrified by my grandmother’s glittering black gaze only increased my terror. What if I began raving about such notions to her? She’d think I belonged in the madhouse. Was that what the “interview” was for? Another insane asylum?