Indigo Christmas (29 page)

Ah! She had it! She would go and talk to Aunt Molly. She needed to tell Riggs how large the party was growing, anyway, and Aunt Molly had a way of seeing things clearly that always helped Hilda's state of mind.

She telephoned first. Riggs assured her that Madam was, indeed, at home and would welcome her visit.

She rang for Eileen. “I am going out, Eileen. only to see Aunt Molly, and I will walk. It is not far, and the day is beautiful.”

“Cold, though, ma'am. Be sure and wrap up good. Will you be home for dinner?”

“I do not know. What is Mrs. O'Rourke planning?”

“Baked ham and sweet potatoes and lima beans and custard.”

“Ask her, please, to keep something warm for me unless I telephone to say I am eating elsewhere. Thank you, Eileen.”

There was, she thought as she walked carefully down the icy porch steps, something to be said for having servants.

At the Malloy house, Riggs greeted her with a smile, the first she had ever seen on his face. “Good morning, madam. But where is your carriage?”

“I walked. The snow is beautiful in the sunshine.”

“That it is. Have you news for me, madam?”

“Yes, Riggs. I hope it is not bad news. At the last count, there were at least three hundred boys coming to the party. Will that be an impossible crowd?”

“I have spoken to the Odd Fellows about their largest meeting hall, madam. It will hold over five hundred if necessary. Perhaps we should plan for that many?”

Hilda sighed. “You are probably right. I did not think this would be such a popular event.”

“The poorer boys of South Bend have had very little attention for many years, madam. It's high time someone thought of doing something for them. I intend to be there, myself.”

“Oh!” Hilda had just had a brilliant idea. “Could you, maybe, dress up like Santa Claus and give out the presents?”

Clearly pleased at the idea, Riggs coughed. “Would it not be better for Mr. Malloy to take that role? Or Mr. Cavanaugh, perhaps?”

“No, Riggs,” said Hilda firmly. “You have a rosy face, and when you smile, you look very yolly. Jolly. You do not have a beard, like most pictures of Santa Claus, but we can give you a false one. You will be very good, I think.”

He bowed. “Thank you madam. It will be an honor. And may I say, you look a bit like a jolly elf this morning, yourself, with your cheeks rosy from the cold. Very becoming, madam, if you don't mind my saying so.”

Hilda could have kissed him. How could she ever have been afraid of this charming man? “Thank you, Riggs. That is very nice of you.”

He bowed again, his face once more set in his butler expression. “Mrs. Malloy is in the parlor, madam.”

Hilda turned away, but before she did she was sure she saw a tear on the butler's face. So that was why he stayed frozen most of the time. When he let himself thaw, his emotions got the better of him.

If, she mused as Riggs showed her to the parlor, she now knew that butlers were as human as anyone else, she had learned an important lesson.

The crusade to keep women from earning their
living as stenographers does not appeal to us
with much force, even though it
has its origin in the great
state of Ohio.
[Washington
Post
]

—South Bend
Tribune
   
December 1904

 

 

29

C
OME IN CHILD,” said Aunt Molly, who was seated by the fire. “I won't get up. My bones ache this morning. They don't care for this run of cold weather. Would you like some coffee or tea, or anything?”

“Yes, thank you, some coffee would be very nice.”

“Thanks to you. I could never abide the stuff before you taught Cook how to make it. I'll have some, too, Riggs. Thank you.”

“Do you know, Aunt Molly, he is
nice,”
said Hilda when Riggs had left the room. “I never thought I would say that about a butler. I have asked him to be Santa Claus at the party.”

Molly clapped her lace-mitted hands together. “What a good idea! I wish I'd thought of it. He's never really stopped grieving for his son, you know. It will do him a world of good to mix with a lot of boys.”

“I did not know about his son until Patrick told me. I think I have not bothered to learn very much about some people. I do not even know anything about Williams, not really, and I worked for him for six years.”

“You'll learn, my dear. Very few people can open their eyes to the world around them, but you are one of those few. Your new freedom will help. You're feeling more comfortable now, aren't you?”

Hilda hadn't realized it herself until that moment. “Yes, I am. I have learned—I am learning—to see that I am the same person I always was, and that other people are the same, too. They are not—they do not just—oh, I cannot say what I mean!”

“They're not just actors, perhaps you're trying to say. Not just puppets playing roles in a play, but real people with real problems and emotions. All of them, no matter what their job or their position in society.”

“Yes!” said Hilda with the relief of having her ideas expressed clearly. “And I am a real person, too, not just ‘a servant' or ‘a Swede' or even ‘a wealthy wife.' It makes it easier to know what to do. And harder, sometimes.”

“Yes, sometimes harder, because society doesn't like us to step outside our roles and come to life. You, my dear, are not a person to put up with that kind of restraint.”

“No. And I am not a person to be—to be just a wife. I do not mean that I do not love Patrick. You know I do, and I am happy and proud to be his wife. But that is not all I am. I do not like it that women are so often thought of as just somebody's wife. Mrs. Brick, I was thinking at the meeting last week, is the wife of a politician. Mrs. Elbel is the wife of a musician, Mrs. Darby the wife of a businessman. Oh, and that Mrs. Townsend, the one I do not like. I forgot to ask Mrs. Clem about her. Is she just somebody's wife, too?”

“Her husband is a banker, and I really know very little about either of them. They're from Terre Haute, I think. The others, though, are all quite interesting women.”

“That is what I mean. I should not think of them the way I do! They are not just wives. They are people.”

“That is beginning to be true, Hilda. It wasn't always. I do think it may not be too many years before women are allowed to vote, and good for them, I say. I was always a rebel—like you. All my life I've said and done what I pleased, and shocked everyone. Now that I'm an old lady, everyone says I'm wonderful. So you see what you have to look forward to.”

Hilda made a face. “There is much of life before that. And you are not old, Aunt Molly!”

“Oh, yes, I am. But I seldom think about it, except when my bones tell me. Now, what have you come to see me about? Or was it Riggs you came to call on?”

Hilda giggled. “I think maybe it was. How shocked he would be—”

Molly put up her hand as Riggs came into the room with a silver coffee tray and two delicate bone china cups, along with some thin, crisp cookies.

Hilda smiled at him, the light of mischief in her eyes. She waited until he had set the tray down—for fear of accidents— and then said, “I was saying, Riggs, how shocked you would be if I said I came here to call on you, really.”

“Ah, but ladies say many things, do they not, madam? Will that be all, then?”

And he was gone, the lacquered façade perfectly in place. “He'll not let you in easily, child,” said Molly, sipping her coffee. “He used to be much less stiff, before the
Maine.
He was very proud of his son's career, used to read us bits out of his letters. So I knew the boy—now, what was his name? Jonathan, that's it—I knew Jonathan was on a ship near Cuba. When the news came about the
Maine
and a telegram came for Riggs, I called him in and said I hoped it wasn't bad news. I'll never forget it. He said, ‘Thank you, madam. I fear the news is very bad. Will there be anything else, madam?' And of course I let him go, because I could see he was controlling himself by sheer force. Ever since, he's been the way you know him. He has never once mentioned Jonathan's name.”

“He wept today,” said Hilda softly, “when I asked him to be Santa Claus. One tear.”

“That's good. You're good for him, I think. But take it slowly. He's worked hard at building up that shell, and it's very thick now. If it cracked suddenly, I don't know what would happen.”

Hilda nodded soberly.

“But you did not, after all, come just to talk to Riggs. Or about him. How can I help you? Is it Norah again?”

“No, Norah is getting well very nicely, if only her mother will stop creating scenes. No, it is the fire, and Mr. Miller, and all. I have learned much, but everything seems to make less sense than before. Aunt Molly, we must find out what really happened!”

Molly frowned. “I would have thought Norah would be in a real state, with Sean under arrest.”

“Oh, dear. Now I will have to tell you, too!” And quickly she related the story of manufactured evidence and the mayor's intervention.

“Ah! I see. And of course that word must not get out.”

“But I think I should not have told Norah. For now others will wonder why she is not upset, and they may guess, or make Norah tell them. It will not be very long, I fear, before everyone knows, and then the police will have to let him go. We do not have very much time, Aunt Molly, to learn the truth.”

“Do you know what the police are doing?”

“No. If I can think of nothing to do, no one to ask, how can they?”

Molly laughed. “You
do
have a high opinion of your own brains, don't you? Not that I don't think you're justified. You solved Daniel's problem for him, when the police couldn't, or wouldn't.”

“I know I am smart,” said Hilda calmly. “And the police are sometimes very stupid. But this time I am as stupid as they. I cannot make a pattern out of the things that have happened. Norah said something this morning that made me think, but it complicated things even more. She said perhaps the fire did not work out as it was intended to, that someone might have meant to start only a small fire, and something went wrong. So we cannot make sense of things as they are, because they are not what the bad person intended.”

“That was very astute of Norah,” said Molly with a little sigh. “But not, as you say, very helpful. It solves the question of why everything is such a muddle, but unless you can work out what
was
intended, you're no further ahead.”

“That is why I wanted to talk to you. Aunt Molly, why would anyone start a small fire in a barn?”

“No one with any sense would!” said Molly fiercely. “A wooden barn full of hay and straw—why, it would flare up in a minute, even without kerosene, which I understand was used.”

“A lantern, yes. It turned over and spilled the kerosene. But could that have maybe been an accident?” She had just thought of the possibility. “Suppose someone went to the barn looking for something. And it was dark in there and the person lit a lantern. And then the person dropped the lantern, and the kerosene spilled and caught fire and started the straw burning. And the person was frightened and ran away, and the whole barn burned.”

“Hmm. Why would anyone have been there at the time?”

“I do not know. Maybe—maybe it was one of the hired man's friends, coming to check on him. He would have been there, asleep, by the middle of the afternoon.”

“No friend would go off and let him burn up.”

“Oh. No, I suppose not. Well, it was a robber, maybe. Someone who knew Mr. Miller was away.”

“Hilda, my dear, you're not using that excellent brain of yours. A robber would go to the house where there might be money or valuables. not to the barn, where the only real valuables would be the horses, which were away at the time, and the buggy, which one cannot steal without horses.”

“You are right. Aunt Molly, what are we to do? We cannot let Sean stay in jail, and if he gets out he could be in danger, and Norah needs him, and—”

“Yes, my dear girl. Yes, the problem must be solved. But we're not going to solve it by getting our minds so twisted we can hardly think at all. Besides, you have a headache. I can always tell. You need fresh air and exercise, not more study and deliberation. Go spend the rest of the day in the sunshine. Go skating with that handsome big brother of yours; the ponds are all frozen hard. Think about the Christmas party, or future plans for the Boys' Club, or anything but the fire. You'll see. An idea will come.”

Unwillingly, Hilda took her leave.

Once outside, she remembered that she had wanted to talk to both of her brothers. Erik, at the central firehouse, was closer, and the sun had warmed the air a bit. She walked briskly and arrived with cheeks rosier than ever.

Erik was currying one of the horses, his favorite, Donner. “It means thunder, in German,” he had explained importantly to Hilda. “Mr. Gruner, he named him. And it's almost the same name as one of Santa's reindeer in that poem. Isn't that funny?”

He was delighted to see Hilda. “Are you all ready for the party? What kind of presents are you getting? Sven's making lots of toys; you should see. And Mama's knitted hundreds of caps and mittens, I bet. What are we having to eat? Will there be candy? What are you getting for me? Sven's making me something, but I don't know what. And he's making something for you, too, and I know what it is, but I can't tell. And I found out something for you, about the fire maybe.”

“Oj dÃ¥!”
said Hilda. “What do you want to talk about first?”

 “My news,” said Erik importantly. “I heard it yesterday from one of my friends at school. He has a friend who knows a boy who delivers groceries to some people named Townsend. He's a banker, I guess. Mr. Townsend, I mean. Anyway the boy who works there, Freddy his name is, he likes horses and so he's friends with Mr. Townsend's coachman.”