by Jeanne Dams
There wasn’t a great deal more to be learned. Hilda skimmed rapidly, catching a few words here and there as she ironed. She stopped at a small heading: MISS JACOBS WAS AFRAID.
The Times reported that two days before she was killed, the young woman had been at home at her rooming house, entertaining a friend. As they sat in the front parlor, a step was heard on the porch outside. “She was frightened,” the friend reported. “She turned pale and stood up, very agitated. She said, ‘I wonder who can have come to see me.’ I thought that was strange, for there was no reason to believe the person outside was calling on Miss Jacobs. She trembled as she went to the front door and opened it, shielding herself behind it as she did so.”
The caller, it turned out, was no caller at all, but Mrs. Schmidt, the owner of the house, returning from an errand. Hilda thought about that as she finished ironing the papers and carefully folded them for Colonel George. Why had Miss Jacobs been so fearful that the footstep of her landlady, which should have been familiar, sent her into a nervous fit? What—or who—was she afraid of?
Whatever it was, it had caught her in the end.
The maid has a heart, the natural affections of a young woman;
she likes to be admired, to think that there is someone
who esteems her above all the world.
—The Complete Home
6
HILDA TOOK THE NEWSPAPERS up to Colonel George’s office. He wasn’t in, so she laid them on his desk and took a moment to look the room over and make sure it was in order, or as much order as she could produce. Her employer was not a tidy man, so letters and envelopes and scraps of paper were strewn all over the big desk, but Hilda knew she dared not disturb them. The colonel knew where everything was, as unlikely as that might seem, and would roar his displeasure at anyone who moved anything. At least the visible surfaces were free of dust and the few ornaments in the room were spotless. The door to the safe—#x2014;a walk-in vault, really—was, of course, closed and locked. Hilda didn’t know exactly what was kept in there, but she knew that a footman who ventured to peek in, one day when the door had been left open, had been sacked without a reference. “And lucky not to be sent to jail,” Mr. Williams had said of the incident, which had happened before Hilda came to work at the house. “You remember, girl, that you are never, under any circumstances, to go near that safe.”
Well, she was neither a thief nor a fool, she thought as she left the room. She had no wish to know what was in the safe. Or if she did, she acknowledged in a burst of inner honesty, she would control her curiosity. She couldn’t afford to be thrown out on the street…and that brought her thoughts back around to the most important subject. What future lay ahead for her and Patrick?
She got through the rest of the afternoon’s drudgery automatically. She performed tasks she could have done in her sleep, and chivvied the under-housemaids to perform theirs, without giving more than a quarter of her mind to the job. When at last five o’clock came, she pulled her cloak over her uniform and slipped out the back door and up the outside steps to wait for Norah.
Hilda saw Norah before Norah saw her, and Hilda’s heart sank. This wasn’t the Norah of the old days, this woman who trudged up the back drive, her body drooping with weariness. She, Hilda, was tired, too, but not bone-weary. Norah looked ready to drop, and the first thing Hilda said when her friend got close enough was, “Hurry! Come in and sit down. There is a good fire in the servants’ room, and I can make you some coffee.”
“Can’t. Sean’ll be gettin’ home and expectin’ his supper. Anyway, Mr. High-and-Mightiness would never allow it.”
“He has taken to his bed. He is sick with something. And Sean can wait, for a change. Norah, you must sit down and get warm, even if you do not have coffee. You look terrible!”
“Always were the soul of tact, weren’t you?” But Norah allowed herself to be taken inside, divested of her hat, cloak, and wet shoes, and installed in the most comfortable chair in the room, her feet propped up near the fire.
“If the old tyrant catches me in his chair—” Norah began.
“He will not. He is in bed, I told you. And he has no control over you, not anymore.”
Norah sighed and wiggled her warming toes. “He does over you, though. Suppose somebody tells him?”
Hilda tossed her head. “Let them. I might not be here forever, anyway.”
“Hilda!” Norah sat up straight and stared at her. “Do you have something to tell me?”
“To ask you. Oh, Norah, I need your advice—yes, Maggie, what is it?”
The waitress stood in the door, hands on hips. “Mrs. Sullivan said as I was to get you to help set the table for dinner tonight, as there’s guests and Mr. Williams isn’t fit for a thing, and some of us is run off our feet.”
Hilda looked at the clock on the mantel. “Dinner is at eight, as usual, is it not?”
“Yes, but there’s our supper, too—”
“I have finished with my work for the afternoon. Now I speak with my friend. I will help you when it is time.”
“Well, of all the—it must be nice to be you, take time off whenever you please, entertain your friends, and in Mr. Williams’s chair!”
She flounced off, and Norah raised an eyebrow. “Her face’d sour milk, that one. She’ll make trouble if she can.”
“She makes trouble all the time. She does not like me, nor I her. But Norah, maybe it does not matter. You see, Patrick wants to marry me.”
“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”
“I mean really. And now, or soon, anyway. He thinks there is a way.”
“Ooh! Tell!”
“Patrick’s Uncle Dan wants to make him a partner. With Cousin Clancy off to New York, and planning to stay there, Mr. Malloy has no son here to carry on the business when he retires. And he is not a young man, and he has always loved Patrick like a son. So he wants him to leave the fire department and come into the business, so he—Patrick, I mean—can take over one day.”
“Glory be to God, you’ll be rich!”
“Patrick will be rich. Well, he will be comfortable, at least. But I—nothing is settled about our marrying. I am still Swedish, and he is still Irish, and our families—”
“Now, you look here!” (It was an unnecessary command. Hilda was studying Norah’s face earnestly.) “How old are you, anyway?”
Hilda did look down at that. “Twenty-three,” she murmured. It was a fearful age to be unmarried.
“And Patrick’s twenty-five. So you’re both old enough to know your own minds, aren’t you?”
“It is not that we do not know what we want to do. We—”
“I’d say it was,” Norah retorted. “Do you want to please your families? Do you want to live here in the fanciest house in town? Or do you want to grow up and marry the man you love and start a family?”
“Of course I want to marry Patrick!”
“Then it’s time you stopped shilly-shallyin’ and did it! I could see before why you didn’t, with both of you so poor an’ all, and you losin’ your job if you couldn’t live here. But if he’s goin’ to be a partner, you wouldn’t need to work. You could hire servants of your own!”
“No, I have already decided I would not want to do that. I thought—”
“Hilda Johansson, you’re already makin’ plans! You’re goin’ to do it, you know you are! Ooh, I’m so excited!”
Norah jumped up out of her chair and gave Hilda a hug. But Hilda was not yet ready to stop talking about the matter. “Yes, yes,” she said, extracting herself from Norah’s embrace. “It is exciting to think about. But Norah, I am not sure I would even like marriage. It is true that I—am fond of Patrick. We are happy when we are together, even when we argue—”
“Which you do every time you say more’n two words to each other,” Norah put in.
Hilda ignored her. “And I—well, I like it when he kisses me and—but look at you,” she said, hurriedly changing the subject. “You are so tired, and you
must hurry home now to cook Sean?s dinner, not to rest. And we never see each other, you and I, and that is not good, not to have time for a friend. I do not think marriage is all fun and kisses.”
“I’m tired because I have to work all day, an’ then go home and work some more. At least until we save a little more money,” said Norah. “And workin’ in other houses isn’t like workin’ here. The work was different here, easier than housemaidin’, and there were lots of people to help, and there was you to talk to. I miss that, too, Hilda. But it won’t be this way forever. Sean’s makin’ good money now, and so am I. Soon we’ll have enough to buy a little house, and then maybe…” Her eyes became dreamy and a becoming blush touched her cheeks.
“Yes,” said Hilda gently. She didn’t want to hurt Norah, to destroy her dreams. But she had to talk this out. “Yes. It will be very nice when the babies come. If there are not too many of them, and if they do not come before you can afford to look after them. But Norah, babies have a way of coming when they will. What if you—well, what if one decides to come before you can afford to stop working? And then there are more, and more?”
She didn?t have to spell it out. She and Norah both knew women, many women, who had grown old before their time bearing child after child, who had known the pain of losing infants to disease, who had drifted from the self-respecting working class into abject poverty because there were too many mouths to feed. Then there were the women who died in childbirth, or the ones who died simply because their bodies had been weakened by pregnancy after pregnancy. Most of these women were immigrants, or of immigrant backgrounds, so Norah and Hilda could both feel as sisters to them.
It was a bleak picture, but Hilda was a hard-headed Swede who liked to look facts in the face.
Norah sighed. “Yes, it can happen as you say, but…” She lowered her voice. “There are ways…you don’t have to have babies you don’t want, or can’t afford.”
“But…” It was Hilda’s turn to blush.
“I can’t—you don’t want to know about these things until you’re married, but believe me. There are ways.”
“I am not a child, Norah! And I do read the newspapers, and sometimes the Ladies’ Home Journal. I know about…things. I know, too, that the Catholic Church does not approve of…of the ways you speak of. And I am not a Catholic, but Patrick is, and you are.”
“What the Holy Father doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” said Norah defiantly.
Hilda was shocked. “But—you must do as your church says!” Norah stuck out her lower lip. “Hilda, you’ve got to understand somethin’. I’m a good Catholic, and I wouldn’t be anything else, ever. But that doesn’t mean I think I have to do every single tiny thing the Church tells me to. Or not do every tiny thing they forbid, neither. I think the good Lord gave me a mind of my own and meant me to use it. And sometimes the Church makes me so mad I could spit. I never told you—we never told nobody—but a few years ago an uncle of mine hung himself, see.”
Hilda’s eyes grew wide.
“It was when times was so bad and he couldn’t find work. And his family was gettin’ poorer and poorer, and he couldn’t figure out a way to feed them. And then he got sick, and he thought he was dyin? anyway, so…” She brushed away a tear. “He didn?t want the family to have to buy medicine and pay doctor’s bills, along with everything else, y’see. He thought he was doin’ the best thing, and we all grieved, but we understood. And then the priest wouldn’t bury him proper, because suicide’s a sin. And that was when I decided the Church wasn’t always right. I was that mad at the priest, I never went to Mass at all for a month. And I decided then and there I’d use me own head to decide what was right and what was wrong. And I don’t think tryin’ not to have babies every year is bad. So there!”
“But—oh, Norah, I understand, and I am sorry about your uncle, but—if the ways you talk about work so well, why do women sometimes have babies when they shouldn’t? Even when they are not married?”
“Hilda!”
“It happens. You know that it does.”
“Yes, well, when people are stupid—” Norah’s face changed. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Hilda, you’re not tryin’ to tell me—”
“I am not!” Hilda was highly indignant. “I am a respectable woman, and Patrick would never ask me to do something I ought not!”
“Patrick’s an Irishman,” said Norah with a small grin. “You might be surprised.”
“I can manage Patrick,” said Hilda shortly. She didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. “But what about his family? And mine?”
“Look, Hilda,” said Norah, serious again. “I’m part of Patrick’s family. Shirttail cousins, true, but still part of the family, and you’re my best friend. Patrick’s Uncle Dan and Aunt Molly think the sun rises and sets on you, you know they do. As for your family, your sisters are a little stuffy about us Irish, but Sven is coming around, and your little brother adores Patrick. Your mother—well, that generation’s stuck back in the old country.”
“It is not so long ago that Mama was in the old country,” Hilda reminded Norah.
“That’s what I mean. This is America. It’s different here.”
“We would have to be married by a priest, in a Catholic church. My family would not even come!”
“Yes, well, you didn’t come to my weddin’, did you, but you came to the party afterward, and we had a fine time.”
You had a fine time, Hilda thought but did not say. “It’s not the same thing. Mama would never forgive me if she could not see me married.”
“Well, let her come, then!” Norah was growing impatient. “There’s no law against it. It’s only your own ideas keep you out of Catholic churches. Or else get married all over again in your church. Or have a judge marry you, if it’s goin’ to fret you so much.”
“But—a Catholic cannot be married by a judge! Can he?”
Norah rolled her eyes. Hilda sighed and shook her head, and would have said more if Mrs. Sullivan hadn’t sailed into the room in a full-blown temper. She was in charge of the household with Mr. Williams abed, and it wasn’t a responsibility she relished.
“So there you are, Miss High-an’-Mighty! I’ve no time to wait for your pleasure, Your Majesty, what with tryin’ to do two people’s work, and company coming, and the soufflé sauce tryin’ to curdle, and that Maggie no more use than a sick headache! You go an’ set that table now, and then come back and help me in the kitchen. As for you, Norah, I’d think you’d know better than to keep Hilda from her work. And didn’t you ought to be home cookin’ supper for your man, as’ll come home tired and hungry any time now?”
She stood in the doorway tapping her foot, her lower lip jutting out. Hilda sighed and shrugged. Norah got to her feet. “It’s very nice to see you again, too, Mrs. Sullivan,” she said as she pulled her shoes on. As she left the room, she stuck her tongue out at the cook’s back.
Hilda went resentfully to the family dining room. There were only a few guests tonight, so there was no need to use the enormous state dining room, whose table would easily seat fifty. There was no need, either, for Maggie to ask for help with setting a table for a mere twelve people. But as Hilda made the rounds of the table, laying down silver, straightening glasses, and tossing scornful remarks Maggie’s way, she wasn’t really thinking about her grievances. She was thinking how profoundly unsatisfactory it was to have to talk to Norah in stolen moments. She wanted a private heart-to-heart, the kind they used to have and would never have again.
As long as you work at Tippecanoe Place, whispered a voice in her head.
The servant girls marry…just as frequently as their young mistresses.
—The Complete Home
7
HILDA WAS TOO TIRED to stay awake that night, but she woke up early the next morning and lay in bed for a few minutes, thinking about Patrick and marriage and families. When could she see him and talk things over sensibly?
It wasn’t easy. In theory she could leave the
house during her rest time, but the weather was far too cold to make an outside rendezvous practical and there was no other really private place they could meet.
Well, she’d just have to see if she couldn’t run down to the firehouse for a few minutes this afternoon. There would be no time to talk, but at least she could make sure that they planned something for Sunday afternoon. This was Friday. It was a long time to wait, when she was bursting with things to say and to ask, but it would have to do.
Life doesn’t always work out the way we plan. When Hilda finished her early-morning chores and went down for breakfast, she found Mrs. Sullivan in a state of total distraction.
“Mr. Williams can’t get up at all this morning,” the cook announced when all were seated at the breakfast table. “He’s terrible bad. The doctor’s been, and he says it’s la grippe, not just a cold. He’s afraid it may turn to pneumonia.”
The servants were struck silent. Mr. Williams could be a hard taskmaster, but they had worked for him and lived under the same roof, some of them for a long time. He was never ill. This was a frightful and a frightening thing. He was not a young man. None of them had ever thought much about his age until now.
They turned solemn faces to Mrs. Sullivan as she continued.
“You know there’s a big dinner party tomorrow night. It’s important, because it’s something to do with politics. I’ve never understood politics and I never will, but I hope I know my duty in this household. It’s up to us to make sure everything goes like clockwork, the more so since it’s the first time we’ve entertained on a grand scale since Mr. Clem died, rest his soul.” She crossed herself, took a deep breath, and continued.
“So it’s extra work for everyone. I’ve tried to think what must be done, because Mr. Williams is too sick to give instructions. I’ll have Janecska to nurse him this morning, Hilda. She has a nice way about her when she wants to, and a light step and hand. When Mrs. George is up, I’ll ask if we should have a real nurse in. Meanwhile, Hilda, you’ll have to see that Janecska’s regular work gets done, and you’ll have to see, yourself, to the silver Mr. Williams hasn’t polished. Oh, there’ll be no rest for any of us till this is over!”