The House of Closed Doors

by Jane Steen

  “There is a picture,” Mr. Buchman continued, “which of course is now your property, as are the letters of blackmail. Naturally I have already written to inform the woman that Mr. Jackson is deceased and that there are no persons left with any interest in protecting his good name. I put it that way,” he continued apologetically, “so that she would not seek to maintain the enterprise at your expense. If she is a sensible woman, as I think she is, she will be content with what she has gained so far, which is a considerable amount.”

  “I will see the picture.” My curiosity had the better of me. “But I do not want to see the letters. If it is possible, I would like you to continue to store my stepfather’s papers at your premises.”

  “Of course.” Mr. Buchman lifted the metal box onto his knees, and deftly unlocked it. His hand slid under some of the papers to what was obviously a well-remembered location, and he drew out a daguerreotype and handed it to me.

  “The boy looks white.” I saw a handsome young fellow of four or five years old with a sweet smile and a mop of tight blond curls. He was dressed very neatly in the usual frills worn by very young boys in good families. The woman standing behind him, one slim hand resting on his shoulder, could have been his servant; she was dark-skinned indeed but did not look like a Negress. I thought that Indian and maybe some European blood was mixed into her veins. She was smartly dressed, diminutive, and graceful looking. Quite like my own mother in all but color.

  “Yes.” The man of business nodded vigorously. “Nature often plays such tricks when there is mixed blood, but it cannot be denied that he is the offspring of the two of them.”

  I looked harder. Yes, there was a definite resemblance. Mother and son had the same shape of face and the same regal bearing‌—‌but that was Hiram’s chin on the lad, and the eyes that looked at the photographer were disconcertingly pale.

  Mr. Buchman took the daguerrotype out of my unprotesting fingers. “Quite damning, is it not? Well, the woman did very well out of your stepfather and contributed substantially to the parlous financial position in which he died.”

  “I am destitute then?” I had recovered from the shock and lifted my head high. I could survive without Hiram’s money.

  “No, no, not by any means. I have telegraphed to a trusted colleague in North Carolina to investigate Mr. Jackson’s affairs there, and I am already speaking to his creditors on a most discreet basis. I believe that we will be able to salvage a modest, but not negligible, sum. You must leave this in my hands, and I will serve you well. But I’m afraid this house will have to be sold.”

  “I understand.” As Mr. Buchman rose to leave, with many muttered words of sympathy and regret, another question struck me. “What is the boy’s name?”

  “Louis Jackson.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  “Another child!” I paced up and down the parlor just as if I had been Hiram, my arms lifted to the heavens. “Another child! What was wrong with that man?”

  “A low resistance to temptation, I would surmise.” Martin was sitting watching me, his arms crossed. “His first wife had, after all, been dead for some time.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I stopped pacing, frowning at Martin in confusion.

  “Then I won’t enlighten you.” One corner of Martin’s mouth twisted down, and then he smiled. “Nell, I declare that you are more concerned that Hiram fathered another child than you are about your own financial situation.”

  I shrugged. “I do not need Hiram’s money.”

  Martin leaned forward, his expression suddenly serious. “You have lived at a certain level of comfort all your life. Even at the Poor Farm”‌—‌he held up one hand to cut off my interruption‌—‌”you were sheltered and fed. You have absolutely no idea what it is like to have nowhere to live and no food. And you have a small child. You must give some serious thought to your future.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t take us in? As a dear friend, of course.” I batted my eyelashes in Martin’s direction.

  I was gratified to see that Martin blushed dark pink, making his blond eyebrows stand out wonderfully. “Of course I would take you in. I have already told you I would ma‌—‌”

  I laughed. “I am not serious, Martin. Don’t forget that just days ago I was ready to depart with merely a purse of coins. In fact, I still intend to work for my living. I am quite convinced that by applying my mind to the situation, I can avoid touching whatever capital Mr. Buchman can salvage from the damage Hiram has done.”

  Martin dropped his head into his hands and shook it vigorously. “Independence,” he groaned. “You are certainly Red Jack’s daughter. Could you not simply do what other women do and graciously accept your station in life?”

  I ignored him. “I sent Mrs. Lombardi a note to tell her that my departure was delayed. I did not tell her why my departure was delayed‌—‌better that she hear the news from me along with the rest of the truth about Hiram. If I leave for Chicago on the eleventh, that will still give me several days with her, and before that I will have a little more time to ascertain the state of my finances.”

  Martin said nothing, closing his eyes and running his fingers through his hair in mock despair. I smiled as I watched his playacting. With the traumatic events of the last few days behind us, we both seemed to be attempting to bring the old lightheartedness back to our relationship. Much better that way, I thought.

  “Anyway, back to the matter of the child Hiram sired‌—‌”

  “What of it?” asked Martin. “You are surely not going to pay a visit to the family.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Only‌—‌now that the payments from my stepfather have ceased, do you think the woman will make trouble?”

  “How can she? She is in North Carolina and is unlikely to come north to blackmail you. And in any event, you will be long gone. I propose that you forget all about Hiram’s little by-blow.”

  “I will never forget the name,” I mused. “Louis Jackson. The poor innocent little thing; it is no more his fault than Sarah is responsible for the circumstances of her birth.”

  “Ah.” Martin’s face brightened. “You are consumed with fellow-feeling for the innocents in the case! How very altruistic of you, Miss Eleanor.”

  I aimed a kick at his ankle, which he neatly dodged with a short laugh. In truth, I was consumed by curiosity more than anything else. But Martin was right: I would never see the woman and her son, who must suffer the fate of those shoved to the margins of society by the sins of the flesh.

  “I will promise you one thing,” Martin said. “I will help you to invest whatever capital you receive. However small the amount, I can increase it. Do you trust me in this?”

  “You are certainly good with your own money.” I liked the idea; Martin was a canny investor with a quick eye for opportunity and a steady head when it came to closing deals. “But won’t looking after my money compromise you in the eyes of the people of Victory?”

  “Well, if they knew about it, they would have a fine old time deciding between two alternatives: that I am a wicked seducer, or that I am entirely incapable of seducing a woman. They can hardly believe both. But they won’t know; I will not invest your money in this town. There are much better opportunities in Chicago. I have already moved my own interests there‌—‌you should know, Nell, that I have little desire to stay in this backwater.” He leaned forward, an eager look on his face. “I have been looking‌—‌in a casual way, of course‌—‌for a piece of land to build a store in Chicago. But the locations I like the most are already occupied, and barring a miracle, it will take me some time to find the right spot.”

  I smiled at the ambition that lighted Martin’s gray eyes. “Perhaps if I do have any capital to invest, I can invest it in your schemes.”

  He chuckled, but I could see that the prospect had caught his imagination. “You would have to trust me a great deal to become my business partner, my dear.”

  “I trust you absolutely.”

  A smile
of delight spread over Martin’s square face, and he unfolded himself out of his chair in one fluid movement. “Then that is settled. I will be your right-hand man, and if‌—‌note that I say if‌—‌I am sure that my own business promises well for the future, I will consult you about investing in it. But your own prosperity‌—‌and Sarah’s‌—‌should always come first in both of our minds.” He held out his hand, and I shook it. We grinned at each other. Friends, I thought, and now business partners. I was glad that Martin would not disappear entirely from my life when I set off on whatever new venture awaited me.

  “Now I must leave,” Martin said, reaching for his hat. He glanced out of the window. “Heavens, look at that dust! One would think we were in the Sahara. Will it never rain?”

  And with a brief bow and a smile in my direction he was gone, leaving me pensive as I watched him lower his head against the stinging dirt whipped up from the street. It would soon be time to make some serious plans for the future.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  It is one thing to plan to make plans; it is another thing to execute one’s intentions. So it was that on the following Monday I was not nearly ready for my departure. At least this time I could arrive in the city with a satisfactory amount of clothing and other necessities; in truth, I had been rather daunted by the idea that I would have to sew myself a new wardrobe yet again.

  I was gazing half-heartedly at my barely packed trunks and wondering whether I should just take one and send for the rest later when Bet rushed into the room at rather more than her usual speed.

  “There’s a big fire in Chicago,” she announced.

  “Another one?” I frowned, thinking of the Lombardis, but there had been so many fires lately that they were no longer really news. “Is it one of the large commercial buildings?”

  Bet shook her head vigorously, her eyes growing wider. “It’s a whole big part of Chicago, so they say. It started last night, and it’s burned up twenty blocks at least already. They’ve been calling for volunteers from all over, but they say the blaze has been spreading all night, and it’s even jumped the river. Terrible, they say. People running around screaming all over the place. You could see the glow in the night, they say, from the church tower right here in the town.”

  I bit my lip and looked toward the window, where the sky was leaden as if rain were promised, but the hot, dry wind still rattled the trees and whirled dust devils into the air. “Twenty blocks.”

  “Ay, and the waterworks are destroyed, so there’s no water for fighting it. Like Hell itself, so they’re saying.” Seeing me blanch, she added, “Yes, Miss Nell, I’m worried too. I have cousins and acquaintances in Chicago, and you have your friends the Lombardis. It’s glad I am that you didn’t travel there last week.”

  I nodded vaguely in her direction and then returned my gaze to the window. The wind outside was a veritable gale, howling around the corners of the house like a pack of wolves. It magnified the sense of insecurity that had already been impinging on my resolve to be calm and show fortitude in the face of uncertainty. In the last eighteen months, my world had been rocked in more ways than one. And yet there was an undercurrent of excitement in not knowing where I was headed.

  Except that all my plans had begun in Chicago, and that great city was now burning. I crossed to the window and looked to the southeast. Was I imagining things, or was that really an orange glow on the underside of the heavy gray clouds? It must be my imagination, I decided. We were a good fifty miles from Chicago.

  A thought struck me, and I opened the window in a hurry and sniffed the air, narrowing my eyes against the dust that whirled up from the street. No smell of smoke. I listened. No cries reached my ears. I could hear, in the distance, all the usual Main Street sounds‌—‌the occasional whinny of a horse, the crashing sound as a cart bounced over the rock-hard ruts in the bone-dry road‌—‌but nothing else. Victory was tranquil as always, animated only by the wind that pulled curls out of my piled-up hair and eventually made me shut the window, spluttering as I wiped the dust from my mouth and eyes.

  No immediate danger to the town of Victory, then. But a fire could catch in a second and consume in minutes. And if you were in the path of it‌—‌as the Lombardis could be‌—‌there might be no place to run.

  “‘In the midst of a calamity without parallel in the world’s history, looking upon the ashes of thirty years’ accumulations, the people of this once beautiful city have resolved that CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN!’”

  Martin crushed the slim, eccentrically printed copy of the Chicago Tribune in his hands as he folded it roughly. “It is headed Cheer Up!” There were dark shadows under his eyes, just as, I knew, there were under mine. For two days we had waited as news of the great disaster drifted up toward Victory. We had woken to a cold drizzle of rain on Tuesday morning, and I was one of a crowd of citizens who gathered in the largest of our churches for an impromptu service, giving thanks that the fire had stopped. Even though I did not relish church, even though I had to endure the stares of the people of Victory, who still gawked at Sarah and whispered to one another when they saw me, and even though I normally considered myself immune to current events, I found that I could not keep still and stay indoors. I wanted to do something. I wanted to put myself where, perhaps, a thread of hopeful news would cross my path. But what rumors there were gave cause for despair rather than hope.

  “You have to admire our people, Nell.” Martin leaned back in his chair, massaging his closed eyelids. “Just a few years ago that city was little more than a depot, and they made it into a great metropolis. And now they are going to do it all over again, in brick and steel this time. Why, the ruins are still smoking and yet the merchants of Victory are already stacking their wagons.”

  “Well, that is typical.” Anxiety had made me cross. “Don’t forget how much money some of the people around here made from the War.”

  “Myself included, you mean.”

  “Well …” There was truth in that. Glued by concern to his mother’s side, Martin had not even incurred the expense of joining the militia. “But,” I continued, following my train of thought out loud, “you could not possibly have left your mother to cope with your father at that time.”

  Martin rose so quickly that his chair rocked backwards. He strode to the window, angry as he always became when his father was mentioned. But then he sighed heavily, and when he turned round to face me his voice was steady.

  “I am not shirking my duty this time, Nell. I have already agreed to take a Chicago family into my home for a few weeks and pledged a large portion of my stock to dress the refugees who have lost everything but the clothes on their backs.”

  I rose and crossed the room to lay my hand on his arm.

  “I was not accusing you of a lack of altruism, Martin. I will sew for your refugees, if you wish. And let your connections know that I too am willing to host a family.”

  “They haven’t asked you yet?”

  I looked down at my black dress. “Bet tells me they will not call on me unless it is absolutely necessary, because I am in mourning and live alone with a small child.” I shrugged my shoulders and picked up the newspaper from the windowsill where Martin had laid it. There was column after column advertising for missing people; maybe I should insert an advertisement for the Lombardis. I scanned the closely packed print, my throat catching at the descriptions of missing children.

  Martin stretched, yawning, and picked up his hat. “I must return to the store, Nell. Time and tide‌—‌” He stopped short and looked me in the face. “You are as white as a sheet. Are you feeling ill?”

  I silently handed the paper to him, indicating a spot on one of the columns with my finger.

  The husband and children of Mrs. C. Lombardi are missing. They were last seen heading north from the Sherman House Hotel. A boy, Edward, and two little girls, Theadora and Lucy.

  That was all. Most of the announcements were equally brief; they were packed so tightly into the space that
I might easily have missed the name.

  “Teddy, Thea, and Lucy… Martin, it can’t be another Lombardi family. Not with the same names.”

  Martin looked at me, his eyes unfocused as if he were thinking hard. “The announcement must have been composed at the newspaper office… wherever that is. The Tribune building was destroyed.” He set his hat on his head. “That is where I shall begin. I’ll find out where the Tribune’s editors are and wire them an announcement saying you are anxious to hear from Mrs. Lombardi. I will give this address.”

  “But Martin,” I realized I was clutching at his sleeve and relaxed my grip, “I want to go down to Chicago. Mrs. Lombardi is alive, don’t you see, and looking for her family. I must help her.”

  “With Sarah? Amid a chaos of smoking, dangerous ruins, looters, and people milling around searching for each other? If someone goes there, Nell, it will be me.” His tone softened, and he grasped my hand. “Now listen, Nellie, let me go arrange for advertisements to be put in the newspapers, and I will ask around to see what is to be done. If it is possible to go to Chicago to look for Mrs. Lombardi and her family, I will do so.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  We heard nothing. Nothing, for days, as every cart that came from the south disgorged its load of refugees who had found temporary shelter in one of Victory’s households and as every wagon that headed back to Chicago did so laden with clothing and food that the people of Victory had donated to the relief effort.

  My anxiety for the Lombardi family, and the need to help in any way I could, forced me out of my self-imposed isolation. Neighbors brought families to me to be measured for clothes, and my sewing machine whirred constantly as I tried to supply them with shirts, petticoats, and clothing for the little children who played under my feet as the mothers whispered tales to me of the fear and confusion, the frantic flight amid a jostling, screaming crowd with a wall of flame behind them.