by Susan Wiggs
“If we don’t take the lead, then who will?” she asked. “The washerwoman bent over her ironing board? She doesn’t have time to eat a proper meal much less lead a march for equal rights. We’re the ones who have the time, Phoebe. We know the right people, for Lord’s sake, we were just at a gathering with every person of influence in the city. And what did we talk about?” She flushed, thinking of her conversation with Randolph Higgins. “The weather. The opening of Crosby’s Opera House tomorrow night. The contention that women are gates of the devil. It’s absurd, I say. I, for one, intend to make some changes.”
“Ah, Lucy.” Phoebe sighed dramatically. “Why? It’s so…so comfortable to be who we are.”
Lucy felt a stab of envy. Phoebe was content to be a society fribble, to let her father hand her—and a huge dowry—in marriage to some impoverished European nobleman, simply for the status of it all. Phoebe actually seemed to be looking forward to it.
Lucy felt a stronger affinity with Kathleen, an Irish maid who felt certain she’d been born into the wrong sort of life and had other places to go.
As she looked out the window and saw well-dressed families in express wagons and carriages practically running over stragglers clad in rags, outrage took hold of her.
“There is plenty of room in this coach,” she said, a little alarmed at the speed now. “We must stop and take on passengers.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Phoebe grabbed the speaking tube. “You’ll start a riot, the horses will balk and then no one will get where they’re going.”
Lucy spied a woman in a shawl, burdened with an infant in one arm and a toddler clinging to her other hand. Rolling up the leather flap covering the side window, she shot Phoebe a defiant look and leaned out the door. A flurry of sparks stung her face, and she blinked hard against a thick fog of smoke. “Driver,” she called. “Driver, stop for a mo—”
Then she stopped cold. She was speaking to nothing but smoky air. The driver had fled. There was no one controlling the team of horses.
She drew herself back into the coach. “I don’t suppose,” she said as calmly as she could, “either of you know of a way to get the team under control.”
Phoebe gave a little squeak and groped for her smelling salts.
Kathleen stuck her head outside the window. The coach swayed dangerously, and she clutched at the side. “Saints and crooked angels,” she said. “There’s no driver.”
She said something else, but Lucy couldn’t hear her because an explosion shook the night. Fueled by some forgotten store of kerosene or gas, a fireball roared down the street toward them. The coach jerked forward, narrowly evading the incendiary.
Lucy grabbed Kathleen’s skirt and pulled her in. Kathleen’s face was pale but firm. Phoebe moaned, looking dizzy and sick as buildings and people passed in a blur of speed. Then she pressed herself back against the tufted seat and shut her eyes, lips moving in desperate prayer.
Kathleen detached the stiff leather windshield of the coach, letting in a hot storm of sparks and smoke. Phoebe coughed and screamed, but Lucy made herself useful, helping Kathleen up to the driver’s seat. Kathleen, who had learned to drive on her mother’s milk wagon, tried to get hold of the reins, yelling “Ho!” at the top of her lungs.
The panicked team plunged down the street. The tallest structures in Chicago were burning, their high windows disgorging flames that lit the night sky. People were trapped in the upper stories, calling out the windows for help. Some of them dropped bundles of blankets containing valuables and breakables. Lucy was shocked to see that one of the bundles contained a live dog, which fought itself free of the bedding and ran off in a panic.
The horses churned along in confusion, knocking aside pedestrians and other vehicles as they headed straight for the heart of the fire. Phoebe screamed until Lucy grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“That’s not helping, you goose,” she shouted, then prepared to climb up next to Kathleen, who had managed to catch hold of a flailing leather ribbon. Digging in her heels, she hauled back with all her might. Lucy grabbed the rein and added her strength to the tugging. The horses plunged and fought, but finally slowed.
Lucy let out a giddy laugh of relief. “Oh, thank—”
A second explosion crashed through the smoky night. The conflagration drew so much air that, for a moment, the flames around them died. The hot void left no air to breathe, then returned with a roaring vengeance. From the corner of her eye, Lucy saw Kathleen blown from her seat.
Lucy called to her, but the horses bolted again. Now she could do nothing but cling to the reins and pray.
Up ahead, the road veered sharply. The runaway team made the turn, but the coach teetered on two wheels, then went over. Lucy launched herself at Phoebe and they clung together. The coach landed on its side with teeth-jarring impact. The horses strained and whistled, trying to flee, but with the rockaway on its side, they could hardly move. The lead horse went up on its hind legs, raking the air with its hooves.
“Phoebe?” Lucy said, still holding her.
“Remind me to report the driver for negligence,” Phoebe said shakily.
Good, thought Lucy. If she was well enough to complain, then she was well enough to climb out.
“I’m going to try to get the door open,” she said. The door was now above her, and the latch had been torn away. She pounded with her fists, then put the strength of her back into it. Finally the small half door opened like a hatchway on the deck of a ship.
To her relief, Kathleen stood at the roadside, singed and disheveled, peering in.
“Are you all right?” the Irish girl asked.
“We are.” Lucy took her proffered hand and pulled herself out of the fallen coach. The panicked horses created a menace with their rearing and shrill whinnies.
“Help me,” Phoebe cried, her glass-beaded gown tearing.
Lucy and Kathleen pulled her out, and she began exhorting passersby for help. But the pedestrians had their own concerns and ignored her.
“It’s every man—every woman—for herself,” Lucy declared, feeling oddly liberated by the notion. “Let’s try to get the horses loose.”
“Loose?” Phoebe blew a lock of brown hair out of her face. “If we do that, they’ll run off and we’ll be stranded. We should try to get the coach upright again.” She studied the ominous blazing sky in the west. “We can’t outrun this fire on foot.”
“Everyone else is.” Lucy gestured at the bobbing heads of the crowd, borne along as if by a river current.
“Sir!” Phoebe shrieked at a man hurrying past.
He swung around to face her, and even Lucy felt intimidated. He was huge, clad in fringed buckskins, with long, wild hair. Even more terrifying was the large knife he took from the top of his boot. Phoebe’s knees buckled and she shrank against Lucy. “Dear God, he’s going to—”
The wild man cut the leather reins of the team. A second later, the horses galloped away, disappearing into a bank of smoke along with the stranger.
“He—he—the horses!” Phoebe said.
“At least they have a chance now.” Lucy grabbed Phoebe’s hand. “This way. We’ll go on foot.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.” Phoebe dug in her heels. “I won’t get half a block in these shoes.”
Lucy was losing patience, but the sight of bellowing flames, marching like an army toward them, kept her focused on escape. She spied a flatbed wagon and hailed the driver, yanking off a ruby brooch as he approached. “Can you give us a ride?” she asked.
He snatched the jewel, swept his gaze over her and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the cart. “Don’t let anything fall off,” he said.
The load of rolled carpets, gilt paintings and furnishings teetered precariously as the wagon lurched along the road. The sky burned so brightly that Lucy had to squint to look at it.
She was doing just that when Kathleen jumped off the back of the cart and ran toward a bridge to the West Division. Lucy screamed her name,
but this time it was Phoebe who was the voice of reason. “Let her go.” Phoebe coughed violently. “She won’t rest until she gets home, and we must do the same. Our way is north, Lucy. You know it is.”
Shaken, Lucy clutched her friend’s hands and tried not to wonder if they would ever see Kathleen again.
The Chicago River cut a line from east to west across the city before turning south, where the conflagration had started. The howling windstorm had fanned an ordinary fire into a holocaust riding a gale, moving with voracious speed, devouring everything in sight.
Lucy had never seen such a powerful force of nature. The fire smashed through whole neighborhoods at a time, destroyed reputedly fireproof buildings and then did the unthinkable—it leaped across the south branch of the river.
The wind was the fire’s greatest ally, driving the flames from rooftop to rooftop. Wooden shingles offered fuel for the blaze to feast upon. In the famous shopping district known as Booksellers Row, the buildings burned from the ground upward.
All those lovely books. Lucy winced at the thought of them being incinerated.
A towering dervish of flame reared at the end of the block, illuminating and then overtaking a throng of people.
Phoebe’s face turned pale in the angry light. “Did you see that?” she asked Lucy.
“I did.” As far as Lucy could tell, they were on Water Street, heading eastward toward the lake. She supposed that the driver would attempt to cross the river at the State or Rush Street Bridges into the North Division.
“The flames are moving faster than a person can run.” Phoebe craned her neck and shouted over the stacked bundles in the wagon, “Driver, do hurry! The fire is closing in!”
“I can’t go any faster than the crowd in front of me,” he yelled in a hoarse voice, ragged from the smoke.
The closer they came to the lake, the denser the mob grew. The river was choked with boats and barges trying to get out onto the open water. The taller ones couldn’t clear the bridges, and many caught fire as they waited for the bridges to rotate. As Lucy watched, a boy climbed the rigging of a sloop and scrambled up to the bridge, hoisted by someone in the crowd. But for the most part, people stampeded across in heedless terror, dropping things along the way, pushing strangers aside in ruthless terror.
Lucy’s father, Colonel Hiram B. Hathaway, always said that a disaster brought out the best and worst in people, and she realized that she was witnessing the truth of it—timid men performing acts of heroism, pillars of society trampling the wounded in their haste to get to safety.
Her parents lived in the tree-shaded splendor of an elegant neighborhood to the north, but that didn’t mean her family was safe. Aggressive, blustering and imperative, the Colonel, as he was known even though he was retired, had a public spirit that would not rest. If the city was burning, he was bound to launch himself into the thick of things.
A decorated war veteran, he was an expert in ammunition and explosives. This would make him particularly useful to those in charge of fighting the fire. The fire companies had resorted to blowing up the buildings in the path of the fire, robbing it of fuel. No doubt the Colonel would be directing the operations, his bewhiskered face ablaze with energy as he planned strategy to battle the flames.
In the midst of danger and mayhem, the thought of her father brought Lucy a needed measure of fortitude. Though he often grew exasperated with his outspoken daughter, the Colonel never treated her with anything less than respect. From a long line of old New England blue-bloods, he was a gentleman to his core. He’d attended West Point, married the most socially prominent girl in Chicago and had distinguished himself in battle at Kenaha Falls, Bull Run and Vicksburg.
But as she grew up, Lucy came to realize that his love and devotion to her and her mother manifested itself in a protectiveness so fierce it was stifling. The Colonel tried to shield his daughter from everything—hunger, hurt, ugliness. He didn’t understand that, in protecting her from what he considered life’s ills, he was walling her off from life itself.
When she asked after the state of his business affairs, he would brush aside her queries, declaring that she needn’t worry her pretty head about such vulgar matters. While her mother was ready enough to accept his patronizing ways, Lucy was indignant.
“For one thing,” she once said to him, “my head is not pretty. For another, I can decide for myself what is worrisome and what is not.”
Yet for all their differences, they shared a deep love and respect for each other, and Lucy said a silent prayer for her father’s safety.
Reflecting on the evening at the Hotel Royale, she felt more foolish than ever. Of all the social outrages she had committed, tonight’s faux pas had been the worst. When people looked back on this date, they would recall it as the night Chicago had burned to the ground.
But not Lucy. For the rest of her life, she would remember a far different disaster—this was the night she had brazenly propositioned a married man.
FOUR
“Did you see what Mrs. Pullman was wearing?” Diana asked as she and Rand left the Hotel Royale. Brushing impatiently at a flurry of sparks that flew around the hem of her gown, she added, “Her jewels were positively vulgar. She wasn’t nearly as vulgar as that snippy little suffragist you were entertaining, though. If not for her family name, she’d be a pariah, wouldn’t she, Randolph?”
Knowing she didn’t expect a response, Rand tucked her hand more firmly into the crook of his arm and scanned the roadway. They had only been in Chicago for a short while, so he was unfamiliar with the city. But the streets were laid out in a neat grid, and he knew they had to head north to Water Street, where Sterling House was located.
An express wagon rattled by, but the driver ignored Rand’s raised arm. A few hansom cabs, crammed with occupants, passed them without slowing. “We’re wasting time trying to hire a ride,” he said. “We’d best go on foot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Randolph. I never walk anywhere.” She drew her mouth into the sweetest of pouts. “Let’s wait until something returns to the livery stables.”
He clenched his teeth in frustration. On the one hand, he didn’t want to alarm her about the fire. But on the other, he wanted her to understand the need to hurry. They had to get to their daughter and make sure she was all right.
The one option he never considered was leaving Diana. He’d sling his wife over his shoulder like a caveman if he had to, but he would never leave her. “We’re walking,” he finally said, pulling her along. “You can yell at me on the way.”
Diana apparently decided that silence was a better punishment. She didn’t speak to him, though she clutched his arm and leaned on him every few steps. Her fashionable, imported shoes were unsuited for walking any distance.
It was just as well she didn’t speak, for he wasn’t all that kindly disposed to his wife at the moment. He’d counted on her to stay with Christine. Instead, she’d grown bored and joined him at the lecture. Some men might have been flattered, but Rand knew Diana all too well. She hadn’t come looking for him. She’d come seeking a diversion from her boredom and had left their daughter in the care of someone they barely knew. Becky Damson seemed a fine young woman, but he had learned long ago not to trust appearances.
After this night was over, Rand decided, he would find a way to turn Diana’s attention and enthusiasm to the needs of her family. He wasn’t certain how to go about it. Some women derived fulfillment from their duties as wives and mothers. He’d seen it himself, though not in his own mother.
The memory ignited a bitterness in Rand that never seemed to mellow. When he was ten years old, Pamela Higgins had walked away from her husband and young son, never to return. Rand had been raised by Grace Templeton Higgins, his paternal grandmother.
But his mother’s departure had left a hidden wound in his soul that he’d carried around all his life. When he’d started a family of his own, he had sworn he would never have the sort of wife who would abandon her family.
“We’ll be home soon,” he said. “I imagine it’s only a few more blocks.”
“That’s what you said a few blocks ago.”
Another blast ripped through the neighborhood, tearing the awnings from buildings and leaves from the few trees still standing. In the smoky distance, Rand made out a crew of militia men with a two-wheeled cart loaded with explosives.
“What on earth is happening?” Diana asked.
“They’re blasting away buildings to create a firebreak.”
In the road ahead, the fire spun and whirled across rooftops. His gut tightened, and he quickened his pace. His instincts screamed for him to run toward his baby daughter, but he couldn’t leave Diana.
People jostled one another in a mad dash for the river or the lakefront. Family groups moved in tight clusters—men with their arms around their wives, women carrying babies or clutching toddlers by the hand. The sight of the children tore at him. He heard Christine’s name in the hiss of the wind.
He thought about how casually he’d left her tonight, how casually he always left her, certain that he would return. Now, as he fought and jostled his way through the packed street, he was haunted by images of his daughter.
On the day she was born, his heart had soared. At last he had what he’d always dreamed of—a family. He’d created something enduring and true. That very day he’d bought two cases of rare champagne, packing them away to bring out on the occasion of her wedding. It was a sentimental gesture, though he was not a sentimental man. But Christine had found a place in his heart where softness dwelled, and he cherished her for finding that part of him.
Tightening his grip on Diana’s hand, he felt his wife’s mounting fear, heard it in the little gulping breaths she took. As he forged ahead, Rand bargained with fate: He would devote more time to Christine. He’d work harder to please Diana, quit flirting with women no matter how provocative he found them and find a way to make Diana more content in her role as wife and mother. If only he could save his child.