Authors: Lynn D'urso
Heartbroke Bay (2 page)
A flutter of guilt trickles through her stomach as resentment at her father’s profligacy rises; had he not financed his stock purchases through a series of loans from Lady Hamilton’s husband, each one secured by a note on the Butler holdings, she would not be here now, subject to the stultifying atmosphere of the clattering carriage, calculating again and again the time it will take for her salary of twenty-three pounds a month to repay the balance that remained on the notes after Lord Hamilton foreclosed on her family’s home. Swallowing her resentment, she stifles also the question of what there will be for her after her employment with Lady Hamilton ends; in four years, she will be almost twenty-eight years old, and with the world’s economy in rags, and her mother and father reduced to a one-room walk-up on the outskirts of London, it is difficult to imagine anything favorable waiting for a single woman on the verge of middle age—especially one newly released from the thrall of a wasp-tongued tyrant who has been known to strike serving girls during the course of her mottle-faced rages.
Upon Hannah’s entrance into Lady Hamilton’s service, it had been agreed that draws of up to four pounds a month were to be allowed against her garnished wages for critical expenses such as books and clothing. She is considering how she may do without either when there is a light tapping at the door separating the opulence of the sitting car from the clattering, workaday world of the kitchen car. Victoria rises, cracks the door, and exchanges low words with a scullion maid in a dirty apron, then comes to where Hannah sits and bends low to whisper, “He’s here.”
Casting a last look at the bleak prospect outside the Pullman’s window, Hannah rises, excuses herself, and tries not to hurry as she walks, with the sway of the rail car accentuating the swing of her skirts, through the door of the Pullman into the steam and smells of the kitchen car.
Two days earlier, as the English party had prepared to depart Chicago on Lady Hamilton’s tour of the West, she and Victoria had gone to the station by carriage to ensure proper disposition of the numerous trunks of clothes, books, medicines, and delicate foods. Two wagons driven by thick-wristed teamsters followed, piled top-heavy with the equipage of the tour. A youngster perched on the tailgate of each wagon armed with a club of strong, supple ash to deter snatch-and-grab thieves. Hannah hated the city. She felt constricted by the endless threading of pedestrians and wagons through mounds of rubbish awaiting removal and the smell of stables swarming with flies.
A Negro porter threading his way through the throng of passengers and hawkers shouted an offer to bring hand trucks and laborers for their luggage. To Hannah his speech sounded like “Ma’am, Ah’ll getcha trucks an de fellahs.” Dazed by the hubbub and unsure where to go, Hannah looked puzzled and asked the porter to repeat himself.
“Trucks, ma’am, fo’ wheah?” He waved to a gaggle of stringy-limbed black boys in singlets and worn trousers to come forward. Again Hannah was at a loss and turned to the driver, who spit a stream of tobacco juice into the cobbled street and replied to her questioning look with a single word. “Where?”
The Negro laborers swarmed the wagons, hefting trunks and cartons over the side, the light-colored palms of their hands and the soles of bare feet flashing, as they shouted unintelligible instructions back and forth, levering and lashing the freight onto carts and barrows.
Hannah had no idea where the departure platform of the Northern Pacific Railroad was located within the maelstrom of steam whistles and shouting that was Chicago’s Union Station. A fistfight broke out between two young boys, and the mother of an immigrant family screeched at her scattering brood in a language bristling with consonants. A blind beggar playing a mouth harp held out a cap to passersby and was ignored. Hannah fought down an impulse to scream for silence and closed her eyes.
When she opened them, a blond man was standing before her. Tall, with wide shoulders and a square, open face that had seen a great deal of sun and a recent close razor, the man stepped forward and tipped a well-kept homburg. The stranger wore a suit of light wool, gray, with thin, vertical blue stripes. His coat, unbuttoned over a pair of matching trousers, accentuated the length of his legs and narrowness of his waist. The legs of the pants were bloused into high-heeled riding boots of the sort Hannah had seen in drawings of American cowboys.
The gray of the suit set off the color of the stranger’s eyes, which drifted the length of Hannah’s body before finding their way back to her own eyes. Rimmed in deep blue and with centers the shade of undyed flannel, they gave Hannah a moment’s pause and a vague sense of recognition, until she realized with a start that they were the exact color and composition of her own. Embarrassed, she looked away when she realized she was staring.
The stranger’s blond mustache curled at the corners of his mouth as he grinned at Hannah’s discomfiture. Strong white teeth contrasted nicely with the ruddy brown of his face. Removing his hat, he held it to his chest, as if to testify that he was an honest man, and offered his name—“Hans Nelson”—like a title, then after a moment repeated it, appending his geographic origins as validation of his rectitude. “Hans Nelson. Of Blue Lake, Minnesota.” Smiling, he stepped closer to Hannah, his eyes roving the details of her face. She, in the manner of a woman who finds herself both unsettled and proud at being so admired, stood more erect and looked away. Victoria crowded closer, eyeing the new acquaintance with the shining eyes and swelling breast of a dove performing a courtship dance. Hannah stammered that they were to board for the West, on the North Pacific Line, “but the dialect of the porters is quite difficult.”
Mr. Nelson waved to the sergeant of the bearers, shouted, and directed the delivery of the baggage to the westbound platform.
“I’m bound for the Pacific Coast myself, by way of Butte, Montana, and then west to Tacoma, Washington. From there I go on to the Alaska Territory by steamship.” He smiled, waiting for the English girls to be impressed by his adventurism.
Hannah found herself enjoying the forward American fashion, so different from the diffidence of strangers in England. “We have much the same itinerary then, Mr. Nelson,” she said, introducing herself, then Victoria, before giving a summary of Her Ladyship’s entourage, as the trio followed the cart train of porters through the crowd.
Nelson instructed the luggage handlers in dividing the goods at the cars, saw to a guard for the property going into storage, then escorted Hannah and Victoria to the steps of the Pullman and tipped his hat.
Victoria curtsied; Hannah removed a glove and held out a hand. Hans made a slight bow to Victoria, but his eyes were on the rose-colored blush that spread up Hannah’s neck, accentuating the lovely freckles on her nose and cheeks.
Now, two days later, as the steel artery of the Northern Pacific Railroad crosses the Missouri River and rolls toward Montana into a region beyond the worst of the drought, Hans Nelson has come calling and presses a small bouquet of softly pink and blue foxglove blossoms into her hand. As she takes the offering of flowers, Hannah notices how strong Mr. Nelson’s hands look, all knob-knuckled and thick, with fingers almost square across the tips and nails scrubbed clean of any sign of work.
After a brief exchange of simple pleasantries freighted with the complex messages of flirtation, Hannah is recalled by the imperious voice of a suspicious Lady Hamilton.
Nelson strides the length of the train back to his car, slowly removing a cigar from an inside pocket—one of the good ones, a fresh Partagás—and slices the tip with a clasp knife before rolling it over a match. As he does, he smiles to himself. Strolling and puffing, he imagines returning to Minnesota with a beautiful, gray-eyed English prize on his arm and a fortune from Alaska in his bags.
Quite refined
, he thinks.
Working for that Lady Hamilton.
He reckons a lady as something akin to royalty. And the arch of Hannah’s neck and the hourglass shape of her waist and bosom make his groin ache.
, he thinks.
Working for that Lady Hamilton.
He reckons a lady as something akin to royalty. And the arch of Hannah’s neck and the hourglass shape of her waist and bosom make his groin ache.
“She’s perfect,” he says aloud. “Just perfect.”
Dear Diary,The attentions of Mr. Nelson grow stronger, and I am greatly flattered. Courtship here in America is apparently done much as they seem to do all of their business—straightforward, and with unrestrained impatience. He is such a handsome man! And vital, as is this great country. The view from the train of all of this space and room makes me shy of returning to England, where all is so stifled by hedgerows. Mr. Nelson has asked to be presented to Lady Hamilton. Dare I believe this is meant as some American substitute for speaking with my father?
Maneuvering conspiratorially to Hannah’s side, Victoria whispered, “Have Bernard invite him for tea.”
Hannah’s chin rose at her friend’s suggestion, and she glanced sidelong at Hans Nelson, who stood beside her, hat in hand, after being introduced to Bernard.
“Mr. Nelson tells me his family has agricultural holdings in Minnesota,” said Hannah.
Hans studied the homburg a moment, then brushed a speck from the rim. “Agriculture, yes. But my own interests are in mining. In Idaho that is. Primarily silver, some gold.”
Bernard’s eyes swam behind the narrow lenses of his pince-nez, flitting over Hans like a dragonfly, touching briefly and lightly on the new suit, the well-tooled boots, the soft suede belt, before humming, “Silver. Yes, of course.”
Hannah spoke up. “Perhaps Mr. Nelson could join us for tea, Bernard?”
The secretary’s fingers stroked the spectacle ribbon around his neck as he considered the proposal before inquiring, “Do you have a calling card, Mr. Nelson? To send in to Lady Hamilton?”
“Ah, sorry,” apologized Nelson. “I was careless back in Chicago and let a pickpocket relieve me of my wallet. It’s embarrassing, but I’m afraid I’m fresh out of cards.”
Victoria, eager to participate in any romance, because the search for husbands is the only game allowed women, took the lead and approached Lady Hamilton directly, embroidering considerably on what she knew or imagined of Mr. Nelson’s position as one of the new American gentry. In a moment of plebian impulse, Her Ladyship agreed there might be diversion in the tales of an upstart.
Now Hans Nelson, with an American sense of open doors and little of class distinctions, has come from the sleeping car he shares with an inebriate drummer of dry goods and two temperate boys of the Mormon faith, passing through the smoking and dining compartments, and past the crowded common seating area where travelers sit on benches of wood, carving at the seats and window frames with penknives. At the entrance to the kitchen car attached to the rear of Lady Hamilton’s ensemble he pauses, brushing with a handkerchief at the streaks of boiler ash and cinders that have marked his clothing. To Hannah, who watches through the grit-and-smoke-stained glass of the door, the gesture implies his hope of winning the interview, and her heart tumbles as she imagines herself mistress of one of the wheatland mansions they have seen from the train, of a scroll-trimmed house painted white and blue, with dormer windows and a turreted corner to raise her view above the rolling horizon.
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