As she opened the inner door, she prepared herself for another day of learning, and her excitement rose because one never knew what the day was going to hold. Like the case last Monday, when a woman had come running into the office to declare that a neighbor family were dire ill and dying.
Davenport had gone at once, walking at a fast clip through a light drizzle, as the house was not far. He and Hannah let themselves in and found the father and mother lying ill in one bedroom, five children in the other, all down with severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and weakness. As Dr. Davenport examined the children, Mr. Dykstra had managed to drag himself out of bed and into the children's room. He was dizzy, staggering and giggling, and in fact appeared to be drunk.
Helping the man back to bed, Dr. Davenport asked for a report on when and how the illness had started. It appeared to have been shortly after breakfast, with the youngest falling ill first. By noon they were all nauseated and stricken with diarrhea and pain.
"What did you eat for breakfast?" Dr. Davenport asked, and was told of sausage, eggs and tomatoes. Leaving the Dykstras as they lay groaning under Hannah's watchful eye, Dr. Davenport went through the modest little wooden house and out to the back where he found the typical garden of most Adelaide citizens. Neat rows had been planted with lettuce, carrots and tomatoes. Dr. Davenport looked around and when the found the empty kerosene tins, came back to the bedside and asked, "Mr. Dykstra, did you use lamp oil on your garden?"
"Had to, Doc. Aphids and spider mites got into my tomatoes again. The plants were young and I knew I'd lose them. So I doused the whole crop with kerosene. It worked."
"Mr. Smith, kerosene is a poison to humans as well as to insects. Your breakfast tomatoes were poisonous."
"But my wife washed the tomatoes real good before we ate them."
"Mr. Dykstra, the kerosene seeped into the soil and was then drawn up by the roots of the young plants. By the time the tomatoes matured, they were full of kerosene. Find another way to kill aphids, Mr. Dykstra."
Dr. Davenport prescribed large doses of water hourly, to dilute the blood, and peppermint to control the vomiting. That night, Hannah recorded two notes on the case, writing on a small piece of paper: "Unexplained euphoria or giddiness is a symptom of kerosene poisoning," and, "If one poisons pests when plants are young, the poison will be present in the mature plant and make those who eat the plant sick." She slipped the note into her father's portfolio, hoping that it was only the first of many she would add to his already impressive body of observations and knowledge.
As she entered Dr. Davenport's office on this morning filled with promise, Hannah saw the distraught look on his face, and she was instantly alarmed. "Oh dear, has someone passed away?" Hannah took a seat in the patient chair. "Was it Mrs. Gardener? Her heart was so weak."
Street sounds drifted through the window as Davenport found his voice. "Miss Conroy, have you been paying visits to a house on the outskirts of town, owned by a Miss Forchette?"
"Yes, doctor. As a matter of fact I had planned to bring up this very subject with you. You see—"
"Miss Conroy, what on earth possessed you to visit such an establishment?"
Taken aback by his sudden, uncharacteristic impatience, Hannah described her encounter with Alice, three months prior, outside Dr. Young's office. "As no other doctor would go out there, I offered to help."
Davenport released a heavy sigh. "You do realize that this has cast serious doubt upon your integrity? That your reputation has been damaged?" He held up a sheet of stationery. "Someone is upset and is threatening to tell Adelaide society of your connection to that house."
"Who?"
He showed her the letter. It was signed, A Concerned Citizen. "They didn't sign their real name."
"No doubt not wishing to admit that they even know of such an establishment."
"Dr. Davenport, I assure you, I went there for no immoral reasons. I went only to help the girls. Certainly they are as entitled to health care as anyone else."
"No one denies that. But, Miss Conroy, that is a house of ill-repute. Anyone associating with it is going to come up suspect. Surely you see that?"
Hannah frowned. "Dr. Young went there regularly. Why didn't this 'concerned citizen' spread the word out about him going to Lulu's house?"
"Because he went there as a doctor, to see to health issues."
"As did I. Dr. Davenport, I was called to wrapped sprained ankles, to suture wounds, to treat rashes. Why is that different from what Dr. Young did?"
"That is because a doctor takes care of myriad ailments, from sprains to fractures to fevers. A midwife, on the other hand, is concerned with but one function of the human body. No one could possibly know that you went to that house for other reasons. You are not, after all, a doctor. You are a midwife, and midwives visit such houses for only one purpose."
"And what is that? Surely the author of that letter doesn't think I delivered babies there."
His eyes widened. Did she truly not know? "Miss Conroy," he said, choosing his words carefully, "what other reason might a midwife be called to an establishment like Miss Forchette's?"
"I have no idea."
Dr. Davenport saw the genuine innocence in her eyes, the lack of guile on her face. He looked at the delicate throb of pulse at her pale neck, her gloved hands clasped patiently in her lap, and he was rocked with a nameless emotion. "Miss Conroy, there is a certain secret and illegal treatment which midwives are known to practice on occasion." He said no more, hoping she would finally grasp his meaning.
It was Hannah's turn to stare, and as she looked at handsome Dr. Davenport with the boyish curls dropping over his forehead, despite the gleam of pomade that was intended to tame such curls, and as she saw the embarrassment on his face, his obvious discomfort with the subject, the full meaning of his words sank in.
Hannah gasped. "I assure you, Dr. Davenport, I performed no—" She could not say the word.
"I know that, Miss Conroy," he said, "but the rest of the world does not. If you were not a midwife, the allegations would not be so severe. In fact, there might be no allegations at all, but a simple questioning of your character. Unfortunately, if word gets out, this will have serious ramifications for me and my medical practice. The fact that I hired an abortionist . . ." he let his words trail off.
Hannah closed her eyes. "I had no idea."
"I know that, but the damage is done and cannot be undone." He lifted eyes so bereft that it took her aback. "I'm afraid I must discharge you."
She stared at him. "Discharge me—" The breath caught in her throat. "But I have broken off my association with that house."
"It doesn't matter. The harm has been done. If I do not terminate your employment here, I risk losing every patient I have. And if my practice closes, people who have come to depend on me might end up going to doctors of dubious credentials."
"I am so sorry," she whispered.
When he saw the tears sparkle in her gray eyes, Gonville Davenport had to fight the impulse to dash around the desk and gather her into his arms. She looked so vulnerable. He wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right, that he didn't care what the citizens of Adelaide thought, that he would protect her and help her through this.
But he knew he could do no such thing. He had to think of his patients.
Davenport blamed himself for this mess. Hannah was only twenty years old, fresh from England and without family. Her maturity and capabilities had blinded him to the innocent girl underneath. He knew now that he should have taken better charge of her, inquired into her off-hours activities, ask about friends and associates. But it was too late now. Her naiveté had done irreparable damage. The horse race at Chester Downs, the German sausage and beer, and the Frenchmen with their hot air balloon flight would carry on without him.
As Hannah started for the door, Davenport said, "Just a moment, Miss Conroy." Reaching for the ivory statuette of Hygeia that had stood on his desk since his honeymoon i
n Athens, he held it out and said, "I want you to have this."
Hannah barely saw the traffic and pedestrians of Adelaide as she made her way back home. How could she have been so blind? Of course people would think of only one reason why a midwife would visit a house of ill-repute. How could she not have realized it herself? Tears blinded her as she dodged carts and horses to cross the street. This was not Bayfield. She was not assisting her father, protected by his wisdom and experience. She was a green girl who had possibly made the worst blunder in her life!
Hannah was met in the downstairs parlor by a grim-faced Mrs. Throckmorton. Alice was also there, looking whey-faced and frightened. And then Hannah noticed that her trunk was there as well. "I am sorry, my dear," the elderly landlady said in genuine sadness. "You have been a good tenant and I hate to see you go. But I received this letter . . ."
"I understand," Hannah said.
"But Alice doesn't have to leave," Mrs. Throckmorton said. "I've told her she can stay, and when she's all better, I'll give her a job and a room."
But Alice went to stand at Hannah's side. "I'm going with Miss Conroy," she said, trying to look as dignified as she could with her poor black eye and bandaged head. She turned to Hannah. "It's my fault, miss. I was the one who took you to Lulu's. And then you rescued me. I will make it up to you, I promise. I shall work two jobs and pay you back."
Hannah turned to the landlady. "Mrs. Throckmorton, may I have a look at the letter?"
Hannah perused the page, reading the inflammatory words, threats, ending with the signature, A Concerned Citizen. But this time she saw something she had not noticed in Dr. Davenport's office. The handwriting was unmistakably Lulu's.
"Yes, you can come with me, Alice," Hannah said as she lifted one end of her trunk and Alice picked up the other. "We'll be all right, you'll see."
They managed to get to the street corner, where carriage and wagon traffic made it impossible to cross, when two men on horseback shouted, "Hoy there, ladies!" To Hannah's surprise, they jumped down—men in dusty work trousers and shirts, with bush hats and sunburned skin—and each took an end of Hannah's trunk. They gave Alice an odd look, but grinned and touched their hat brims at Hannah and said, "Where to, miss?"
She and Alice followed the helpful strangers for several blocks until they came to a modest hotel with a sign in the window that said, "Lady Guests Must Be Accompanied."
Hannah tried to pay the two men, but they only winked and said it was their pleasure, and as they made their way back down the busy street to where they had tethered their horses, Hannah saw a boy in ragged clothes and bare feet sloppily pasting posters to the brick wall of the hotel.
They were all the same: the latest front page of the Adelaide Clarion.
And the headline story was about troubling news from Western Australia, something about an Aboriginal uprising near Perth, colonists slaughtered, missionaries massacred.
And a government coastal survey party, their vessel docked in a deserted cove, had been attacked—with loss of life.
9
A
LICE DREAMED OF THE FIRE AGAIN LAST NIGHT.
It was the fourth time since leaving Lulu's. Before that, Alice had not dreamed even once of the fire that had claimed the lives of her parents and her siblings, sparing only herself. Why? she wondered as she finished her morning tea and decided to go for a walk, today being Sunday. Why had she not dreamed, or even really thought about the fire, for the past eight years, only to have it haunt her now in such detail that she woke up soaked in perspiration?
"I'm sorry, miss, but I won't wear cosmetics," she said quietly but firmly, responding to a suggestion Hannah had made for concealing her disfigurement. "Lulu paints her face. She forces her girls to paint their faces. I won't be like them."
Hannah gave Alice, who might otherwise have been very pretty, a thoughtful look. It was a cool autumn morning in May, and they were finishing their breakfast in the room they shared at the Torrens Hotel on King William Street. Hannah had asked Alice to call her by her first name, but Alice was too unused to such familiarity with anyone to stop addressing Hannah as "miss." Besides, in order to secure a room at the hotel, the two had to pass themselves off as a lady traveling with her maid, as hotel policy did not allow unaccompanied women to register.
A week had passed since their eviction from Mrs. Throckmorton's. Alice's injuries were fading, and now she was anxious to search for employment. But Hannah suspected that Alice was going to run into the same problems she had before she went to work for Lulu: no one wanted a disfigured servant. Hannah had an idea of how Alice could solve the problem with cosmetics, but Alice would have none of it.
"You're really quite pretty," Hannah said. "With your lovely blond hair and its natural curls, your blue eyes. From the right side, you have a perfect profile and flawless skin. Now if we could just cover . . ." When she saw the closed look on Alice's face, Hannah said, "Let me show you something."
She was determined to help somehow. Alice's disfigurement was crippling. Strangers, when they saw her face, could be insensitive and even cruel. Everywhere Alice went, she met looks of curiosity, pity, and revulsion. It resulted in her developing a defensive gesture: she would bring her hand up to the scarred side of her face and let her fingers flutter at the edge of her maid's cap, as if she were trying to hide behind her hand. The unfortunate result was that she just brought all the more attention to the disfigurement.
"My mother was a Shakespearean actress," Hannah said as she opened her blue carpetbag and brought out her mother's book of poetry. Folded inside was a playbill that Hannah had kept as a memento. Unfolding it now, she held it up for Alice to read.
A WINTER'S TALE
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
ON WHICH OCCASION,
MISS LOUISA REED
WILL PERFORM
BEING THE LAST NIGHT OF THEIR PERFORMANCE THIS SEASON
THEATRE ROYAL, SHAKESPEARE SQUARE, EDINBURGH
29 JULY 1824
"This was my mother's last performance," Hannah said. "She had met my father months prior, during a tour of southern England. She had twisted her ankle and he had treated it. They had fallen in love. After this performance, my mother returned to Bayfield and to John Conroy, giving up the stage forever."
As Hannah spoke, a memory from her childhood returned in vivid detail. She was no more than six or seven at the time, and her mother was showing her a most remarkable bag. She called it her "kit" and it was full of boxes and bottles and little cases. Stage makeup from her days as an actress. Hannah was dazzled by the sticks of greasepaint, the gums and pencils and powders designed to give the actor a different face than his own. "With these I can be a Chinese Princess," Louisa had said merrily. "Or an African Negress or a maiden aunt in Lincolnshire. I can make myself ugly or beautiful, young or old. Anything I wish to be!"
Recalling that distant afternoon, Hannah thought: Stage cosmetics can create artificial flaws.
Or cover them up.
"You see? My mother wore cosmetics, and she was very respectable. Alice, have ever seen a stage play? Then I shall take you to one as soon as we can afford it."
"Thank you, miss," Alice said, thinking: When we can afford it. They were already in arrears with the hotel rent, and soon they would have no money for food. The problem was, how were they to earn an income? So far, no one would hire Alice, and Hannah had gone through the employment adverts in the newspapers, only to decide in the end against applying for positions. She had not explained why to Alice, but Alice knew the reason: that Hannah might put a future employer in the same jeopardy as she had Dr. Davenport. Both Alice and Hannah knew that whoever she worked for would be a likely target of Lulu Forchette's poisonous pen. Unfortunately, leaving Adelaide, and thereby Lulu's reach, was not an option. Alice knew that here was where Hannah was to meet the American, Neal Scott, in October—or so she prayed.
After reading a frightening newspaper account of Aboriginal uprisings in Western Australia, Hannah h
ad written letters to authorities in Perth, asking after the welfare of a ship called the HMS Borealis. She had also written to an Aboriginal mission, inquiring about a missionary couple she had met on the voyage from England.
Alice had heard all about the miraculous journey of the Caprica. And she had seen Neal Scott's photograph. He was a very good looking man, and from the way Hannah had talked about him, he was smart and educated, adventurous and courageous, and quite the gentleman. Alice was envious, as she herself could never hope for such romance in her life. Long ago, before fire had robbed her of family and home, Alice had dreamed of being a wife and mother. But that dream had died.
After removing the maid's apron that she insisted upon always wearing, Alice straightened the cuffs and buttons of her maroon dress that was slightly out of date in that the sleeves were tight and there was no crinoline under the petticoats. She then affixed her simple straw bonnet to her hair and took a long look at her face in the mirror—one side supposedly pretty, the other side puckered with scars. She looked at Hannah in the reflection, seated at a desk, her head bent over quill and stationery. Through the open window came the melodic peeling of bells from Adelaide's numerous steeples. "How come you don't go to church, miss?"
Hannah looked up. "I beg your pardon?"
"You said your father was a Quaker. Don't they go to church?"
Hannah studied Alice's eyes that were a remarkable shade of blue, and she saw only innocent curiosity there. "When my father married a stage actress he was banned from the fellowship of Friends. But he kept the Sabbath in his own way."
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