Hannah Read online

  “Oh, no. I’m going to have the Hawley nose,” Ettie replied.

  “Now, whatever is that?” Hannah asked.

  “Really, Ettie,” Miss Ardmore broke in. “This conversation must stop.”

  Hannah quickly gathered up the tray to leave. As she walked out the nursery door, Ettie shouted after her, “It’s that honking big thing Papa has smack between his eyes and his mouth!”

  As Hannah came back upstairs to get Jade’s pan of milk from the dumbwaiter, she saw Lila and Clarice about to make their descent. They both looked lovely. Clarice was dressed in a pink gown with seed pearls embroidered in a floral design. Her blond hair was done up with tiny silk roses tucked in the coronet of braids. Beside her stood Lila in tiers of turquoise ruffles. A diagonal garland of ivory satin bows spilled down the skirt from waist to hem.

  Hannah gasped with amazement when she saw Lila. She looked much older than sixteen, and stood there proudly enjoying the effect she was having on Hannah. ”You look…you look wonderful, Miss Lila,” Hannah said. But at just that moment Mrs. Hawley came out of her room, looking not simply wonderful but magnificent in her Charles Worth white silk gown overlaid with a black, delicately scrolled embroidery that gave the illusion of wrought iron with its curving tendrils and vines. The off-the-shoulder sleeves and deeply cut neckline provided the perfect frame for the blaze of diamonds against her creamy skin. Her dark blond hair was artfully piled into a cloudlike confection with a few tendrils falling to graze her ears, from which sparkling diamond pendants hung. By comparison, her daughters looked as drab as governesses.

  “Oh, Mummy.” Ettie sighed. “You look so beautiful.”

  “Thank you, dear. And don’t your big sisters look lovely?” Hannah waited tensely.

  “Oh, yes! And, Lila, you look very grown up.” Ettie paused and turned to Clarice. “And, Clarice, you look the same age, but prettier.”

  “Prettier than me?” Lila said, tipping her head and looking at her little sister. Hannah noticed that her tone was not harsh but almost pleading.

  “Don’t be silly. I mean prettier than Clarice usually looks with her nose in a book.”

  There was a titter of nervous laughter.

  “Quick, Hannah! We’ve got an emergency. Susie’s taken ill.” Mr. Marston rushed up to her. “You’re going to have to help serve tonight. Into a formal uniform now! Quickly, girl. Daze will help you.”

  Hannah rushed to the pantry closet where the uniforms were kept. Daze was already standing by the closet door holding out a black alpaca-wool dress with long sleeves and high white stock collar for her.

  “I’ll look like a reverend in this,” Hannah muttered. “My goodness, the collar is scratchy.” It was odd but ever since Kansas, Hannah had been much more aware of which materials chafed and which were soft. Her bedsheets were infinitely softer than her muslin nightgown, so she had taken to sleeping in nothing. And she loved the feeling—it was so free.

  “Don’t complain,” Daze said. “Do well at this and then when we go to Maine you might get to serve again, and you’ll earn yourself a nice Christmas bonus if they keep you for fancy parties. Here, I’ll help you into the apron.”

  “Ouch! That’s way too tight. I can hardly breathe!” But the apron was not the only thing constricting her lungs. The realization that she would see the painter again hit her full force at the very moment Daze tied the sashes.

  As Hannah started to pull away, Daze called out, “Wait, Hannah, your cap.” She helped Hannah put it on. “All your hair’s to be tucked under. Mrs. Hawley is insistent about that.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to wear these. It makes it so hot!” And was she already blushing? What if she spilled something on him? Her hands were shaking and she wasn’t even carrying anything yet.

  “Well, we do have to wear them,” Daze said, pushing an escaping curl back under Hannah’s cap. “Now you’re set,” Daze said, taking a step back and giving her an appraising look. The mobcap was a confection of frills and had three streamers that fell down her back.

  “I hardly feel set, Daze. I don’t know the slightest thing about serving in the dining room.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Marston and I will look after you. Stick close to me and just do what I do. A few rules, though. Always serve from the left, but fill water glasses from the right.”

  Hannah swallowed nervously and repeated in a whisper, “Serve left, water right.”

  She was shaking like a leaf when she entered the dining room, and could not even look up to see where Wheeler was sitting. She just had to get across a distance of about ten feet with the first course, a velvety oyster soup. God, do not let me spill this, she prayed. In all, there were sixteen guests. She would only have to deliver three bowls. Daze and Florrie would take care of the rest.

  “Don’t worry,” Daze whispered. “It’s all downhill after the soup. That’s the hardest.”

  Thankfully Wheeler was not one of the three guests Hannah was charged to serve. Perhaps it didn’t matter. She felt his eyes following her as she moved about with the soup course and then cleared the bowls on Mr. Marston’s signal.

  Between the soup and the following course, Hannah stood at her post against the wall next to Daze. Mr. Marston surveyed the dining table like a great bird stalking a marshland. No glass must go more than two-thirds empty. Rolls must be passed at just the right time. Plates cleared when the slowest eater had begun his or her final bites. It was a complicated sequence of events that demanded precision timing. How Mr. Marston kept everyone’s needs in mind and so quietly told all the servants what to do was nothing short of miraculous. But what did it really matter in the long run? Hannah wondered. What would happen if there was a slipup in the complicated code of serving a dinner?

  Hannah looked at the people around the table. They were among the wealthiest and most distinguished people of Boston, in the house of an old and distinguished family. She had heard Mr. Marston once call the Hawleys “Boston Brahmins,” and when she asked what that meant, he said, “Noble.” Yet their lives were constrained by a set of rigid dictates as repressive in their own way as all the rules she had lived under at the orphanage.

  Lila and Clarice were the youngest in the room. For the most part, the other guests were vastly older than even the Hawley parents. All except for Mr. Wheeler, who was seated next to a desiccated, grayhaired lady with crepey skin gathered under her chin in drooping folds like pleated satin. Two of the women wore lofty ostrich feathers that plumed airily above their hairdos, but none of the women were as magnificent as Mrs. Hawley. The men were all in formal attire except for one very elderly man, whose clothes were so shabby and threadbare, and his bow tie so crooked, that his garb could hardly be considered “formal” and perhaps barely even “attire.”

  Clarice sat to her mother’s left and Lila to her right. Mrs. Hawley watched them both carefully through the entire first course, monitoring their conversations.

  “Professor Curzon,” Clarice said, turning her sweet, delicate face toward the wrinkled, slightly unkempt gentleman to her left, “did you read the article in the Daily Advertiser?” Hannah noticed Mrs. Hawley wince at the word article. Daze had told Hannah that Mrs. Hawley worried about Clarice with her bookish ways appearing “too smart” for her own good, distracting from her natural beauty. But Mrs. Hawley absolutely blanched when Clarice continued, “The article was about Theodore Roosevelt and his—” She broke off suddenly with a bit of a jolt. Hannah guessed her mother must have kicked Clarice under the table. “Mama—”

  “We don’t need to discuss politics at the table, dear.”

  “It’s about conservation, Mama. He wants to set aside land for nature preserves.”

  “Nature preserves! What a silly idea.” Mrs. Hawley laughed gaily.

  “But, Mama, I plan to join the Sierra Club.”

  “How lovely!” Edwina Hawley’s mouth pulled into a glaringly bright smile, and she deftly changed the subject. “Speaking of parks, have you seen the tulips this spring
in the Public Gardens? They are simply spectacular, and they say that the quince tree is blooming for the first time in ten years.”

  Clarice appeared slightly miffed but retreated into her usual shell of benign silence. She never sulked. Conversation resumed along the lines that Edwina Hawley obviously found more pleasant and appropriate. There were swift segues to the opera, the symphony, boating on the Charles, and Mrs. Jack Gardner’s “palace” that was under construction on the Fenway.

  Throughout these conversations, Lila was definitely “making eyes” at Mr. Wheeler. Coy looks darted from her like small birds released from captivity. She asked him in a taut voice what dress he felt she should wear for the painting, which was to begin the next day.

  “Do you think this dress would become me for the painting, Mr. Wheeler?”

  “Well, it becomes you anytime, Lila,” he answered diplomatically.

  “Oh, is Mr. Wheeler to paint your portrait, dear?” the elderly lady with the crepey skin asked.

  “Yes.” Lila turned away and answered the woman. Hannah and Mr. Wheeler both stole glances at each other, and their eyes locked. The glance had lasted only a second, two seconds at the very most. Hannah did not blush. It was not a moment of embarrassment or discomfort. Quite the opposite, it was a moment of astonishing intimacy and familiarity, as if they had retreated to a separate room, a place far from where they actually were.

  “And myself as well as Ettie, he is to paint us in the portrait,” Clarice offered.

  Mr. Wheeler quickly broke away from Hannah. “Yes, and we must consult with them. It’s important to have a balance of color in such a portrait.”

  “Why?” Lila asked. It was a single word but there was something in the way she said it that brimmed with defiance. The desiccated lady blinked and her pale gray eyes seemed to bulge out slightly. Professor Curzon became extremely involved with cutting his meat. Another woman appeared fascinated by the etched leaves on the water glasses.

  “Lila.” Mrs. Hawley turned toward her eldest daughter. There was a quaver in her voice. “Mr. Wheeler is one of the distinguished painters of today.”

  Lila dipped her chin slightly and then very slowly pivoted her head in her mother’s direction. With a voice as steady as her mother’s was tremulous, she said softly, “Then as the foremost painter in America he should know why.”

  Conversation simply stopped. A young girl at a formal dinner party had thrown down a gauntlet of sorts, challenging not simply the painter but all the unspoken rules of civility. Her tone toward her mother was unmistakable—cool but seething with contempt.

  Hannah and Daze exchanged nervous glances. A desperate light seemed to flicker in Mrs. Hawley’s eyes.

  Mr. Wheeler coughed slightly. “Lila, as a painter it is my job to create a palette that tells the truth about the subjects of the paintings, that reflects the deeper currents running through their natures. At the same time, I must create a balance in the tonalities despite your and your sisters’ individual characteristics.”

  Lila sighed, and then began to speak in a flirtatious, almost chirpy voice. “Well, I hope with all this talk of balance and tonalities, it will be flattering.”

  “I don’t flatter. I only tell the truth,” Mr. Wheeler said quietly. He slid his eyes toward Hannah.

  12 MUSIC!

  “IS THIS THE NEW fashion, eh? Something from Paris, Edwina?” the elderly, rumpled gentleman asked.

  Edwina Hawley smiled. “I have never liked this custom of the men going off to smoke cigars and the women withdrawing to a different location. This is 1899, the last year of the nineteenth century. Believe me, in the next century this habit will be gone. Out the window!” She laughed gaily. “Now into the music room. We shall serve coffee there, and after-dinner cordials with a bit of music.”

  When all the guests had been served, Edwina Hawley stood up. “And now I have begged Auntie Alice to play us a tune on the harp.” She looked toward the old lady with the crepey skin.

  Every morning since Hannah had been at number 18, she had come into the music room to stand in front of the harp and wonder what sounds could be drawn from it. Even in its silence, she could almost catch the elusive, fluid notes. Now finally she was about to hear it. A quietness settled upon her as the elderly woman took her place on the stool and tipped the lovely instrument back so it rested on her shoulder. The first chords shimmered in the candlelit glow of the room.

  Water! This is the music of water. Not sky, not heaven, not angels, but water. The sounds of the harp spilled like liquid into the room. But it was not simply water, there was color as well. Hannah watched the woman’s long fingers coaxing music from the strings. She knew the woman was good, but could she not draw out an even more delicate sound? If she would only let the string vibrate a second longer. Unconsciously Hannah started moving her own fingers over the edges of her apron. The liquid shadows of this music filled her.

  There were only two people whose eyes were not on the harpist. Stannish Whitman Wheeler saw again what he had suspected when he first glimpsed Hannah in this room. He could not tear his eyes away from her, as if she had a resonance more powerful than any harp. He remembered the way the light had caught her hair that first morning he had come across her in this very room. Could she be? he asked himself for perhaps the twentieth time. It was impossible. But…

  “What’s wrong with Lila?” Daze whispered to Florrie. “Look at her staring at Mr. Wheeler.” Florrie turned her head and inhaled sharply. Lila Hawley’s face had been transformed into a peculiar mask as she watched Stannish Whitman Wheeler’s rapturous gaze fall upon Hannah.

  13 “MY OWN HEAVEN”

  “WHAT WOULD MR. WHEELER call the truth?” Lila Hawley buried her nose in Jade’s fur as she stood before the oval mirror in her bedroom and admired herself. She was wearing just her underclothes and she slipped off the straps of her camisole to bare her shoulders.

  “What is the truth about these shoulders, Mr. Wheeler?” she asked the mirror, angling first one way and then the other. There was only the flickering light of a candle. She made coy little gestures, winking at her reflection, casting sly looks over her shoulder, puckering up her lips into a little rosebud for an imaginary kiss. “Shoulders like these don’t need to be flattered by your brush, do they? They’re perfect. Why, the no-count count, as Mama called that man who came to call in Paris, compared my complexion to a Greek goddess’s. But now come to think of it, where has he ever met one? They’re just made up. And why would I want anything to do with that old count? He had hair growing out of his ears! Why would I, Jade?”

  She drew the cat close to her face. The cat and the girl peered into the mirror. Lila could see her reflection in the polished gemstone eyes of her cat, and Jade could see her reflection in her mistress’s eyes.

  “No, of course we don’t want him. We want you know who!” She giggled softly and the cat purred. “He talks about truth, but what is truth? Is truth that stupid new scullery girl? I don’t know.” Lila sighed. “She does make me nervous. Now, with Dotty, you could trust her. Very docile. Remember the time when Mrs. Partridge lost her diamond clip and we found it? Well, Dotty, I guess, really found it but we kept it and I made her swear never to tell. And she didn’t. Dotty was a good secret keeper. And now we have the clip. Oh, I’m going to get it from its hidey-hole. Let’s play dress up, Jade!”

  Lila put the cat down and walked over to the chimney where the porcelain stove’s pipe connected. Lila crouched and slipped in her fingers to find a loose brick. Jade walked about the room as if patrolling it, defending the mistress’s territories.

  “Ah! Still here!” Lila drew out a small tissue-paper bundle. Jade walked over and began nosing the paper. “Patience, dear, patience!” After a few seconds Lila lifted from the nest of tissue a dazzling diamond clip that spiraled like a swirl of stars.

  “Here, dear, you can wear it first.” She took a thick tuft of the fur that grew between Jade’s ears and snapped on the clip. “Oh, my! Don’t you loo
k absolutely beautiful!”

  She scooped up the cat and walked over to the mirror and held her up. The candlelight was caught by the innumerable facets of the diamonds that cast reflections all about the room until the walls and ceiling danced with swirling galaxies of light. Lila began to turn slowly.

  “My own heaven. I have made my own heaven right here. I am the goddess of it all”—she paused—“and my shoulders are flawless!” She stopped suddenly, cocked her head, and looked at the mirror. “You know what? I bet that stupid girl’s shoulders have freckles. She’s a redhead. Redheads always have freckles. Someday I’ll find out. What would Mr. Wheeler think of that—a girl with ugly freckles all over her?” She began to giggle and her giggles erupted into shrill, high-pitched laughter. It ricocheted in her brain so loudly she thought her head might split and she put down the cat to clamp her hands over her mouth so no one would hear. She was laughing so hard tears squeezed out from her slitted eyes. Jade purred deeply and rubbed up against her leg.

  14 “KNOW YOUR PLACE, SCULLERY GIRL”

  HANNAH HAD TRIED her best not to think about Mr. Wheeler. And then there he was at dinner that evening, and made that stunning remark, “I don’t flatter. I only tell the truth.” He had been answering Lila but looking directly at Hannah.

  It was as if Wheeler knew a truth about her she did not. The feeling grew in her during the after-dinner entertainment in the music room. She did not have to look at him to feel the peculiar sensation of his attention focused on her. It was as if that current she had experienced the first time she had met him tugged on her like those liquid shadows of the music.

  That night Hannah dreamed of the harp’s music. In her sleep, she touched the strings she had longed for. Her fingertips played a dream harp as real as the one three floors below. She knew instinctively how to persuade the strings to yield the notes, how to let the vibrations travel so that music, spinning like gold, wove through the air. Her body ached with this music. It wrapped around her like shimmering liquid shadows in her sleep. She felt the timeless rhythms of water, of tides, of the currents that stirred in the depths of the ocean. And when she was in the deepest part of sleep, beyond the reaches of the conscious world, where one’s spirit can rise in the night air, she felt a rumble stream through her being. She woke up.