by Nancy Moser
But her ploy soon failed as the children began to notice her. Many approached with something to sell—rags or a flower or a piece of bread—and others came boldly with their palms outstretched. The distinction between peddler and pauper was not noticeable, as all wore clothes that were shredded or holey or sized too big or too small. None wore coats against the October chill, and a few, shockingly, were barefoot.
“No, no,” she repeated. “I have nothing. I’m sorry, but I have nothing for you.”
They were unfazed by her disclaimers, and the crowd of four children became eight, then a dozen. There were none older than twelve, and many should have been sitting on their mother’s laps. Their eyes pleaded and cut into her soul. She felt a tug within that threatened to either strangle or snap and break her.
Where were their parents? Where did they live? When was the last time they’d eaten? Or bathed? Or been hugged?
A little girl of not more than four tripped within the gaggle and fell to the ground. Out of instinct, Lottie knelt to help her up. The children took advantage of her lessened height and pressed harder against her, their dirty hands grabbing, imploring, needing… .
Frightened, she pushed their hands away. “Stop it! Get away from me!”
Apparently taken aback by her shouts, they backed away, letting her pass.
She stumbled free of them, her breath ragged. Within a dozen steps she ran into the path of a man dressed in black with long ringlets at his ears.
“Umph!” he said, taking her arms to steady her. “Obserwuj1 to!”
She broke free of him and ran as fast as she could.
“Sí wy dobrze?”
Lottie didn’t look back.
Mrs. Tremaine opened a notebook featuring various china and sterling flatware patterns. “I was thinking the Royal Doulton china would be the best for your party. And perhaps the Alvin sterling. I particularly like the Old Chippendale pattern.”
Charlotte was still trying to get over the shock of hearing that the Tremaines were giving a welcome party in her honor. Thirty of their closest friends.
Mrs. Tremaine took her hesitance to indicate dislike. “Or I suppose we could go with the Haviland and the Wallace.”
“No, no,” Charlotte said. “Your first choice is lovely. It’s perfect.” Charlotte glanced at Beatrice, who was shaking her head.
Mrs. Tremaine noticed her daughter’s action. “You don’t approve?”
“Oh, I approve,” she said. “But isn’t there a less stodgy way to introduce Charlotte to the clan?”
“New York society is not a clan, Beatrice. And no, there is no better way than a dinner party.”
Beatrice sighed dramatically. “Plus, I suppose it is a chance for you to show off.”
“Beatrice!”
She responded with a shrug. “Flaunting our fancies is the reason for the season, is it not, Mother?”
“Our best china and sterling are not ‘fancies.’ They are the finest dinnerware available, and they show our guests how much they are appreciated and—”
“And indicate how much we are to be appreciated.”
Mrs. Tremaine took in a long breath, and Charlotte waited for a burst of anger, for surely Beatrice deserved it.
But instead of an outburst, Beatrice stood. “I will ease the tension in the way I know best: by leaving you two able ladies to plan the soiree without me.” She nodded at her mother, then turned to exit the drawing room.
“What are your plans for today, Beatrice?” her mother asked.
The girl paused in the doorway, then turned half round to answer. “To be chaste and correct in every way, and to uphold the decorum and sanctity of the Tremaine name. Will that suit you?”
Her mother didn’t answer but turned back to the book of tableware. “Then there it is; we’ll use the Royal Doulton and the Alvin.”
Although she wasn’t certain it was proper, Charlotte reached out and skimmed the top of Mrs. Tremaine’s fingers with her own. “I want to thank you for all you’re doing to welcome me here,” she said.
Their eyes met for a moment. Then Mrs. Tremaine pulled her hand away in order to turn a page. “Now, for the table linens …”
Finally.
Lottie checked the slip of paper against the numbers on the building. Yes. This was the place.
It was a better neighborhood than she’d left, but not by much. At this point, with her feet and back aching, she was not about to discriminate.
She walked up the stoop and was ready to knock on the door when she hesitated. Did this dwelling belong to one family or was it a tenement house?
Before she could find out, a window opened to her right and a woman leaned out to shake a rug. She saw Lottie. “You be wanting something, Fraulein?” The voice had a German ring to it. Lottie was sincerely glad to hear English of any kind.
“I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. Twilerby.”
She looked at Lottie skeptically. “And why would you be doing such a thing?”
Lottie was taken aback. It was not the woman’s business.
“Be that way.” She started to close the window. “I have no time for chitchat.”
“No, wait!” Lottie said. “My name is Lottie Hathaway, and I’m just in from England. Mrs. Twilerby is a cousin of a good friend of mine. We wrote to her regarding my arrival. We sent a telegram. She’s expecting me.”
“Oh, she is now, is she?”
“I assure you, ma’am, that our association is legitimate and—”
She waved Lottie’s words away like flies in the breeze. “Oh, you can assure me all you want, but that don’t change the truth of it.”
“The truth—?”
“Mrs. Twilerby died three weeks ago of a fever, and her husband moved west a week after that. Since the bridge got finished, Samuel couldn’t find steady work, and with Ingrid gone … he moved to Iowa or Kansas, or someplace thereabouts.”
“She died and he moved?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” She put her hands on the window sash, readying to close it.
Suddenly Lottie remembered her luggage. “But wait! My trunk. I had it sent here from Castle Garden, to this address.”
The woman hesitated, and just the way her eyes skittered left, then right, made Lottie fear for her property. She stepped closer to the window. “It was a trunk with brass fittings. Surely you’ve seen it.”
The woman pursed her lips and said, “Come on in, then,” and shut the window.
Hope returned.
Lottie entered the building and paused to let her eyes adjust to the dark foyer. Stairs led to other apartments. A door opened to the right and the woman came out. “This way.”
She led Lottie down a dimly lit hallway, then used a key to open a door. Inside was a small room packed full of belongings. Lottie immediately spotted her trunk.
“We didn’t know who it belonged to,” the woman said. “And since the Twilerbys were gone …”
“That’s all right,” Lottie said as she stepped over a pile of clothes to reach it. “I’m just glad—”
She reached for the lock.
And found it broken.
She opened the lid and confirmed her fear. “My things … they’re not here.”
The woman shrugged. “As I said, we didn’t know who the stuff belonged to and so—”
“You helped yourself?”
“If you’re accusing me of stealing, I’ll tell you to get on by, this very minute.”
“But you took everything.”
The woman backed out of the room and pointed down the hall. “I’ll ask you to leave now. You’re the one who sent your luggage to people who weren’t even here. You’re the one who made the mistake, not me.”
She was right about that. Lottie never should have relied on strangers, but she’d been so keen on having someone in New York as her connection, her friend …
The woman called down the hall to someone, and Lottie heard a man’s voice respond. If she wanted to avoid trouble, she neede
d to leave. Now.
She took one last look at her empty trunk and left the storage room.
“That’s the way out, yes it is,” the woman said. “Out that door and keep on walking. We don’t need your high-and-mighty kind round here, making accusations against good, hardworking folk like us.”
She passed a scruffy man with a long mustache. “Is this the troublemaker, Johanna?”
“She’s the one, Grif. Accused me of stealing, she did. Dummes Mädchen.”
Lottie burst into the open air and rushed down the front steps. The man and woman followed after her, yelling and shaking their hands at her, causing everyone to look in her direction.
Lottie hurried faster, heading farther north, feeling as if imps were biting at her heels. She only slowed when her lungs demanded more air than her corset allowed. She ducked into an alcove and tried to catch her breath.
A woman with a bosom too prevalent for midday sauntered by, then returned to look some more. She snapped the end of her shawl at Lottie’s arm. “This is my stand, bitty. My block. Getcher own.”
Lottie gasped. Was this a woman of ill repute? And even worse, did she think Lottie was one of her kind?
“Pardon me.” Lottie skimmed past the woman and out to the street again.
“Well, pardon me,” the woman parodied in a high voice.
Lottie sped by other pedestrians on the sidewalk, keeping her head down. Yet where was she going? She knew no one. She had nothing. Not a penny to buy a crust of bread. Where would she sleep? Who would take care of her?
She thought of the Scarpellis and yet … they had a full house. They didn’t need some stupid, inept Englishwoman taking advantage of their hospitality.
She reached an intersection and saw a street sign for Tenth Street.
The Tremaines live at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue.
Dora was at the Tremaines’. Comfort was at the Tremaines’. The end to this horror was at the Tremaines’.
Thirty-fourth Street … she had a lot of walking to do, but she would do it.
It was her only hope.
“Ugh!”
Lottie looked back to the street she’d just crossed and realized she’d stepped in a pile of horse droppings. She hurried to the curb and dragged the sole of her boot over its edge, hoping to extricate—
“Hey! Stop that.”
A man had come out of his shop and was pointing directly at her.
“Pardon me, sir, but where else would you like me to clean my shoe? And where are the crossing sweepers in this city?”
His eyebrows rose and his hands found his hips. “Well, aren’t you the hoity-toity one? Want me to send my son out here to sweep the way clean for you, milady?”
Actually …
As others passed by, Lottie realized she had been rude cleaning her boot right in front of the man’s store. “Actually, I do apologize. Perhaps you have a cloth I could use to aid my foot in releasing its … bounty?”
He leaned his head back and laughed. “Now, that’s a different way to put it. Sure, girlie. Come inside, and you can even sit down while you do it.”
Sit? That sounded blissful.
Lottie walked into the store, putting her weight on her heel so as not to foul his floor. He offered her a chair and a rag, and she completed the nasty task, then washed her hands in a bowl he’d brought for that purpose.
As she was leaving, to be polite, she showed interest in the man’s wares. “What kind of shop is this?” He had a wide assortment of items from musical instruments to luggage to jewel—
“That’s my necklace!” She pointed at a ruby necklace in a glasscounter case.
The man looked at it, then at her, and she could tell he was appraising her as he would a jewel. Without a bonnet and wearing a traveling suit that was in much need of a good brushing, he would find her tarnished at best. “I don’t think so.”
“I know so!” Lottie said. “It was stolen from me at Castle Garden! My mother gave it to me on my last birthday.” Then she knew what kind of shop … “Is this a pawnshop? Did you buy this from someone—from the thief who stole it from me?”
“Hey, now, girlie. I don’t know where people gets the things they bring in. There’s no way to know it.”
“But it’s mine and I want it.”
“Then you’ll have to pay for it.”
She was taken aback. “I should call the police. That’s what I should do.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Go ahead and do that. But unless you can show me proof this is yours …”
“I … I have no proof.”
“Then you can buy it same as any customer.”
This was ridiculous. But she wanted that necklace back. “How much is it?”
“Five dollars.”
“Five? It’s worth five hundred at least. Those are real rubies and diamonds.”
He smiled smugly. “I thank you for the information. Five hundred, then.”
Why had she told him that? “I don’t have five hundred dollars.” Or five.
“Then I’m guessing this conversation is over.”
She bit her lip. “If I want it back, the price is five dollars, yes?”
“For you? Why not?”
She looked around the other cases. “Did the man who brought that in … did he bring in other pieces? What about a sapphire ring and some pearl earrings, and—”
The store owner suddenly stepped from behind the counter and put himself between Lottie and the goods. “The transactions with my suppliers are confidential.”
She tried to get around him, but he blocked her attempts. “Suppliers?” she said to his face. “That’s an interesting word for thieves. Forget the five dollars. I’ll get my goods back by calling the police.”
He took her by the shoulders. “I won’t have my business disparaged by some harpy off the street. Off with you.”
“Get your hands off me!”
He pushed her out to the sidewalk, then stood guard in the doorway. “Go on now, or I’ll be the one calling the coppers.”
Seeing she had an audience of passersby, she smoothed her skirt and looked upward at his sign. “McCorey’s Pawn Shop … I’ll remember you and I’ll be back.”
“You get some cash ’n’ I’ll be waiting with open palm.”
I bet you will.
A fine mist turned Lottie’s trek from drudgery to despair. Her clothing grew heavy with damp, and she gripped her hands around her arms against waves of shivering. She walked north with head lowered, her consciousness mesmerized by the rhythm of her shoes upon the sidewalk. Step, step, step, step … keep going, keep going, soon it will be over. Over. Over.
Where the southern neighborhoods had been congested with people and carts, as she neared the Tremaines’, pedestrians were few. Carriages passed by with their coachmen crouched low against the wet cold. The wheels splashed water, dirtying her already dirty shoes and skirt. The people she did pass walked beneath umbrellas and gave her a wide berth, as if her lack of such shelter made her someone to fear. All sane people were inside, where it was dry and warm.
Did that mean she was insane?
Oddly, during her march, she didn’t ponder her predicament: no money, no luggage … Instead, her thoughts focused on her goal: the Tremaines’. There was no need to consider other alternatives. There were none.
Lottie glanced up to check her progress and saw an intersection ahead—what should be the intersection. A white stone building stood catty-corner, looming four stories. It reminded her of a library. The buildings on all sides were also formidable, some row houses and others larger than they, all in prime condition. Which house belonged to the Tremaines?
A man hurried across the street toward her, his umbrella raised high to accommodate his top hat.
“Excuse me, sir?”
He walked past her, then reconsidered. “Yes. Well. May I help you, miss?”
“If you please, which house belongs to the Tremaines?”
He
pointed at the white stone building. “The servants’ entrance is around back,” he said.
Lottie barely managed a thank-you. Servant? He thought she was a servant? Only after the humiliation had its full say did she realize the Tremaines’ home was the huge building she’d taken for a library. This was a home? For four people? She’d assumed their wealth to be above her own family’s but had never imagined it could match the wealth of English royalty.
She crossed the street to the left and walked on the sidewalk directly across from the home. Her determination faltered.
How could she possibly knock on their door looking as she did—as a servant, or worse, a wet dog, drowned by the rain. Why, she wasn’t even wearing a hat. She never should have given it to Sofia. She needed that hat. If only she had the hat— The addition of the hat would not have changed her condition, for it too would have been soaked, its ribbons and flowers wilted and sagging.
If only it hadn’t started to rain.
If only …
The list was too long.
“Thank you, Mr. Childs,” Charlotte said to the butler as he helped her on with her cloak.
“ ‘Childs’ will do, Miss Gleason,” Mrs. Tremaine whispered. To the servant she said, “The umbrellas?”
A footman and the butler retrieved two umbrellas, which they unfurled as soon as the front door was opened. A carriage awaited the two women, and they hurried down the front steps to get inside, with the two servants straining against the wind to protect them with the umbrellas.
Charlotte sat on the seat and brushed the wetness from her skirt. “It’s a good day for flowers but not much else,” she said.
“Happily for us, Thorley’s House of Flowers has an enormous assortment inside for us to choose from for your party.” The butler closed the door of the carriage, and it began to pull away. Mrs. Tremaine looked outside. “Oh my. Who is that slovenly woman there? I do hope Childs gets rid of her. Beggars are not acceptable in front of private homes.”
Charlotte looked outside too and, as the carriage sped on, craned her neck to see more.
No. It couldn’t be.
Was the woman standing in the rain Lottie?
She raised a hand, as if to wave.
“Do sit back, my dear. It’s not polite to stare.”