Lovelier than Daylight

by Rosslyn Elliott

  Uncle Will shifted and his cane tapped the floor. “Mrs. Loomis, were the children surrendered to you by their mother?”

  “Yes, sir.” Her face sealed itself against further questions like hardening wax. “More than that I cannot say.”

  Then Rachel had given them away, just as George said. Susanna’s heart deflated and her uncle looked equally downcast. Was the rest also true? Never. There had to be another answer.

  She gripped her brocade handbag. “May I see the little ones? Della is the five-year-old. And little Annabeth, and baby Jesse.”

  “You may. Follow me, please.” Mrs. Loomis led them to a back stairway.

  “Uncle Will, if you need to stay here . . .” Susanna trailed off, conscious of his cane.

  “I’m not so decrepit that I can’t manage a few stairs.” But he winced as he climbed the first step.

  As they mounted to the second floor, a faint sound of infant cries reached Susanna’s ears. The matron crossed the hall and opened one of the tall oak doors. Baby noise washed out into the hallway at greater volume, along with light. Susanna followed her inside at her nod. Judging from the marble floor, the room must have once been a ballroom. Now, instead of a piano or a table, numerous bassinets sat in rows. A woman in uniform dress and white cap held a baby against her shoulder and patted its tiny back. She was as tender as a mother. Susanna’s heart cramped.

  The matron called to the attendant, “Alice, will you bring me Jesse Leeds? He is the newest.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The baby she held ceased its crying and she laid it down in a bassinet. She strolled to another bassinet on the end and murmured to the baby as she lifted it out.

  It was Jesse, with his little shock of reddish hair. He began the soft, hiccoughing cry that meant he wanted his mother—she remembered it well from helping Rachel. Susanna unwound the strings of her handbag from her fingers, flexing them against the unexpected ache. She had pulled the strings so tight that they left white marks on her hands.

  The matron gave her a sympathetic look, and when the attendant approached, she indicated with a nod that baby Jesse could go to Susanna.

  She held him under his arms and looked into his face. He was like Rachel, as all the boys were, with his auburn hair and big round eyes. She gathered him close and he nuzzled into her neck. At the baby smell of his hair like sweet, fresh hay, tears collected in her eyes. She turned away so the others would not see her weeping. Droplets fell from her face to vanish into his rough baby gown. Why, why, had her sister married George? No one else had ever married so badly in the Hanby family, no one had married a drinker. They were Hanbys, and so no one in her family ever touched a drop or associated frequently with those who did. Only Rachel had taken it so lightly as to think she could marry whom she liked, whether he shared their values or not. And now Rachel was gone, and her children were in danger of vanishing too. She held Jesse close.

  After a few minutes she hefted Jesse in one arm, wiped her face with the other sleeve, and turned to Uncle Will, whose troubled eyes gave away his internal battle.

  “Jesse must come back with us,” she said.

  The matron’s brow creased and she crossed her arms over her ledger. “Miss Hanby, you are unmarried?”

  “Yes. But my aunt and uncle have been married for decades. They live in Westerville, and I am staying with them to attend college.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” the matron said. “But, sir, you are in your”—she pressed her lips together—“golden years. And I presume your wife is as well?”

  “Yes.” Uncle Will smiled gently as if he forgave the reminder of his cane and white hair.

  “And forgive me for prying—but have you significant means to provide for this child and the others?”

  His smile slid away. “No.”

  “I am sorry, but our Women’s Benevolent League has established certain policies to protect the welfare of the children we shelter. And one of those policies is that our outplacements must be to young families, both spouses living, with demonstrable means to provide for children.”

  Susanna put a protective hand on Jesse’s head. “But they are my nephews and nieces.” The baby stared at her as if he knew something strange was afoot.

  “Miss Hanby, it is difficult, but we must consider their futures. These three are so young—” She looked at the ledger again. “Jesse, Della, and Annabeth will find excellent homes in which they will want for nothing. Childless couples will value them as the children they never had.”

  “Will they be together? In the same home?”

  The matron paused. “It is unlikely. We have a family who has been waiting for a young infant, a boy, for months. And another who would take a darling two-year-old like Annabeth. The five-year-old will go to a different home.”

  She could no longer listen. “The children mustn’t be separated.” She bowed her head over Jesse, who grabbed a lock of her hair and twined his fingers in it.

  “I will send for the girls so you may see them.”

  Susanna looked up to see the matron whisper to another attendant, who had come in behind them. She finished and turned back to Susanna and her uncle. “Our policies exist to protect the children, and you have no way to support them, from what you tell me. There is one way you might reclaim the children, but I can’t recommend it under the circumstances.”

  Susanna stayed mum, arms wrapped around Jesse’s comforting weight.

  The matron continued. “If their father were to come and take them back before they were placed out to new homes, we would be bound to return them to him. But, Mr. Hanby, I beg you to pray on it long before you take children you might not be able to feed.”

  Uncle Will nodded, his brow heavy.

  Jesse was falling asleep in her arms, his breathing regular, his face round as a cherub’s.

  The door opened to admit two little girls in cream linen. So the home had furnished them with clothes better than the disgraceful ones George had kept them in. Annabeth and Della held hands.

  Della’s eyes grew big. “Aunt Susanna!”

  Susanna handed a startled Jesse to her uncle, who took the baby in one arm with ease, shifting his cane to lean against his leg.

  Della dragged Annabeth toward them and jumped into Susanna’s arms. “Have you come to take us home?” Her blue eyes grew watery. “Mama left us here.”

  “I know, Della.” Susanna must not weep when the girls needed her reassurance. “I know.” She hugged Della’s little body and knelt to the floor to gather Annabeth in her other arm.

  Annabeth’s dark hair was pulled in two short bunches behind her ears, her cheeks dimpled. “See Mama?”

  “No, sweet girl. Mama has gone away for now.”

  “I want Mama.” Annabeth’s lower lip drooped.

  “Everything will be all right, girls, I promise.” She longed to tell them they were coming home with her, but she wouldn’t make that promise until she could keep it.

  “Miss Hanby, I suggest that you go to the Hare Home and see about the others,” the matron said. “We will not place these children out for at least three or four weeks. They need time to gain weight and grow strong.”

  Guilt lanced through her. How could she explain about George and Rachel, and the children’s thin and pale look?

  “Thank you, Mrs. Loomis.” She embraced the girls again, longing for her arms to be a shelter from what lay ahead. When she released them, they clung to her. “I must go,” she said, touching Della’s cheek. “Be good and take care of Annabeth. I will be back to see you.”

  “I want to go with you!” Della pleaded, tears sliding down her face.

  “I know. But this is a good place. Be patient, and I’ll be back.”

  She had to refuse their clutching hands when all she wanted was to hold them. The nurse eased the girls back a few steps.

  “Say your prayers, and eat all the good food, including the vegetables.” Susanna forced a cheerful tone, but she would lose her composure if she did not leave so
on. Uncle Will relinquished baby Jesse to the nursery attendant.

  She felt their eyes on her back the whole way and Della’s pitiful sniffs following her. When the double doors closed behind them, she reached for Uncle Will’s free arm and walked close to him, clinging to any human comfort. She thought she would rip in half.

  They bid the matron farewell and walked down to the street. Uncle Will guided her to the omnibus line to wait.

  “Can we afford the fare?” she asked him. If only she could use some of her tuition money to pay their expenses, but it was exactly enough for the year, and her uncle had insisted she must not touch it.

  “Don’t worry yourself on that account.” He rattled a few coins in his pocket. “We may not have much, but I’m still making harnesses, and we’ve put aside a few pennies. The children must come first.”

  When the streetcar came, Susanna settled herself on the bench next to her uncle and watched the scene outside the windows. So many fine homes—she had never seen the like. Any of those families who lived here might take the children, for they certainly had “demonstrable means.” It was wrong—what could be plainer than the need of a family to stay together?

  Once they crossed into downtown proper, the business establishments created a swirl of traffic and painted signs covered the buildings: Varner Jewelers, Ohio Stoves and Pipe, J. Hall’s Fabric and Parasols. The storefront labeled Smithson, Undertaker featured a polished hearse carriage, two black horses hitched up and ready for death at a moment’s notice.

  “There.” Uncle Will pointed. “High Street. We can walk from here.”

  He had surprising stamina, for a man of his age with a limp. Five minutes’ walk down High Street didn’t seem to drain his strength, though Susanna refrained from taking his arm in case that might be an additional difficulty.

  A right turn on Town Street brought them past more merchants—a shop front full of sewing machines on the corner, and a drugstore beside it. Beyond that was a soot-covered gray building, its sides naked and ugly without the clapboarding that covered the stores next to it.

  Uncle Will checked the address on the handwritten card the matron had given him. “That establishment is our destination.”

  Four stories high, the building was bleak and forbidding, its windows streaked with layers of grime so she could not see inside even at the street level. Sad curtains sagged behind the smoky glass, curtains that might once have been pink but were now gray as the windows and walls.

  She tried not to let her trepidation show in her eyes and went up to the door. When she lifted the handle of the iron knocker, the whole contraption came halfway off the door and dangled down in the air. She shot a glance at Uncle Will, who moved up and knocked with his fist. The muffled thump did not sound loud enough to bring an answer.

  In a minute, though, the door wedged open and a hostile face with small, piggy eyes looked at them through the crack. “What is it?”

  “I am William Hanby,” her uncle said. “We understand there are three children here by the name of Leeds.”

  “What of it?”

  Uncle Will paused, his expression inscrutable. “We wish to see the children and ascertain that they are safe. This young woman is their aunt, and I their great-uncle.”

  “The children are indentured to this orphan home now. You understand that?”

  “Yes,” Uncle Will said, though a shadow flickered across his face.

  The door opened a little wider, revealing a stout woman whose apron strained around her waist, her gray curls unkempt and wiry at the edges of her bonnet. “So you want to see them?”

  “If we may.” Uncle Will must have been quite a force of nature in his youth, for even with his snowy mane he was still capable of winning female hearts with his quiet deference.

  The squat woman seemed to relent, with a grudging jerk of her chin. “All right then.”

  Uncle Will placed his cane over the sill and levered himself up. Susanna followed him into the dank hall and up two flights of stairs to the top floor. She saw the strain in her uncle’s shoulders, but he made no sound as he ascended. It must hurt his knees to climb, since he was slow on the stairs but still so vigorous on the flat road.

  The third floor was divided into only two large areas. She was sure this building was once a warehouse or factory, with such unwelcoming, bare rooms. Fragments of plaster lay like crumbled cheese on the ground. The ceiling was in dire need of repair, with holes and stains along the entire south end of the building.

  “You have roof troubles?” Uncle Will asked.

  “Our benefactor did not leave us with excess funds. We must make do,” the woman said over her ham hock of a shoulder. “I am Mrs. Grismer, the housekeeper.”

  Cots huddled together at the far end, and on each sat a childish figure working on something in her lap.

  “Leeds!” Mrs. Grismer said.

  All the faces turned toward them. Then one sprang to her feet. “Aunt Susanna!” A young girl ran through the gloom, her thin frame and torn dress heartbreakingly familiar.

  “Clara,” Susanna said as she embraced her niece. “Are you quite well?” Clara’s slender shoulders were shivering under Susanna’s hands.

  “Oh yes, oh yes.” Clara’s eyes were bright, though her voice was brittle. “Have you come to take us away?”

  “No.” The fat woman’s voice was hard. “You belong here now, and we will determine where you go and how you may be useful. Those are the terms under which we accept children.”

  Susanna must be careful, very careful. “Where are Wesley and Daniel?”

  “They’ve gone to help haul coal and earn their way.” The housekeeper stood with her arms propped on her hips.

  “I see.” Susanna made her response as noncommittal as she could.

  “How do the finances of this home fare?” her uncle asked.

  “Terrible, just terrible.” Mrs. Grismer fell into what sounded like a long-whined complaint. “We have only ten dollars for vegetables for the whole spring and summer. For thirty children, sir.”

  As her litany of woe continued, Susanna stole a glimpse at her uncle. He looked fascinated, which was odd. Oh—she should have known. He was distracting the woman to allow Susanna some private words with Clara.

  Below the babble of the housekeeper’s talk, Susanna whispered to her niece, “We will try to take you home with us, Clara, but not just yet. Be patient. And pray for us.”

  “I’m afraid. Daniel is coughing.”

  That was grim news. Daniel had always been the most fragile of Rachel’s children, prone to a rattling cough at even the slightest chill.

  “A piece of ceiling fell on a boy last night. His head was bleeding.” Clara leaned closer to Susanna like a fawn seeking a warm side for comfort.

  “We will not be long,” Susanna said. “We’ll remove you from this place one way or another, I promise.” No matter what it took, Susanna could not leave them here.

  The housekeeper’s voice grew pointed and penetrated the gloom. “The girls must sew. They are sewing for their own suppers, you see.”

  Clara looked down at the scrap of material she still held in one hand. It looked like men’s underdrawers. A flush crept up Susanna’s neck. Clara was too young for so intimate a knowledge of men’s undergarments. Was there no better task for the girls?

  “Well, Mrs. Grismer,” her uncle said. “Our deepest thanks for your kindness in allowing us to see our niece.”

  The woman harrumphed, but she looked self-satisfied. “If I say so myself, Mr. Hanby, the children would be far worse off without me.”

  “Indeed.” Her uncle sounded remarkably sanguine.

  Is that true, or is some of the children’s food going down that woman’s gullet? But Susanna would not speculate without proof.

  “Visitors really aren’t allowed, so you must be going,” the housekeeper said.

  “Yes,” Uncle Will said. “Perhaps we shall stop by again and bring you some sweets for the children.”

 
Light flared in Mrs. Grismer’s small, thick-lidded eyes. “And you will be welcome, Mr. Hanby.”

  And with a few more pleasantries from her uncle, they made their way down the flights of stairs.

  The comparative brightness of the street outside should have loosened her tongue, but she stayed silent all the way to the horse car. Uncle Will offered her his arm without comment, as if he knew that a young woman beyond tears was also beyond words.

  Six

  JOHANN TWISTED THE TAP AT THE BASE OF THE KEG and held the tin cup beneath it as amber liquid flowed out. He raised the mug to his nose and inhaled the aroma. This lager was ready, with just the right hoppiness to win his father’s approval. He took a sip and let it linger on his tongue. Yes, it was well brewed— light and bittersweet with the color of honey, not sour like the lager some brewers tried to foist on unsuspecting customers.

  He called to Heinrich across the cellar, “This is ready.”

  “Sehr gut. I’ll tell the men to get to it this afternoon,” Heinrich said.

  His father’s voice echoed down from the ground floor, “Johann?”

  “Down here, Vater.”

  Steps thumped on the wooden stairs and his father walked into view. The broad planes of his face gave him a permanent air of good nature, but now his brow was furrowed. “We have a small problem.”

  Henry Corbin stalked in behind him, his dark hair, olive complexion, and narrow features a sharp contrast to Johann’s father with his fair openness.

  “The Westerville temperance gang vandalized my property last night.” Corbin’s words were choppy remnants of fury. “They bored holes in the barrels and let all the beer run out on the floor.”

  “And the bottled liquor?” Johann needed details if he planned to write it up for the paper at some point.

  Corbin took a packet of tobacco from his pocket. “Safe. They must not have thought of it, or else someone surprised them and they didn’t have the opportunity.” He stuffed a wad of chew in his mouth.