Chapter Eight #3
“I don’t know if anyone can help me,” the woman said, sorrow giving way to weariness.
“Have you no family?”
The woman’s face crumpled again. “My mam turned me out.”
“Oh. That is very hard on you, I’m certain,” Elizabeth said. Not waiting for an invitation, she slid onto the bench beside the woman. “Do you think her position will alter, given the sad news of what happened to the child’s father?”
“She’ll tell me to go to the Sisters.” She raised her chin. “And I won’t do that. I won’t!”
Among the Irish, Anna knew, going to “the Sisters” meant putting one’s baby in an orphanage.
“I understand,” Elizabeth said, with a kind smile. “Again, I would like to help.”
The woman looked confused. “I’m sorry, but who are you? Why were you in the office?”
“We knew of someone on a commercial vessel and thought it might be the same one.”
“But it wasn’t,” the woman said, in a flat tone that suggested she envied Elizabeth her good news. As it was a statement and not a question, Elizabeth was spared the need to tell a lie.
“This is my sister, Anna Bradley,” she said instead. “And my name is Elizabeth Demarest.”
Elizabeth had waited a beat between the two names, and Anna suspected she was wondering if the name Bradley might elicit a spark of recognition. Cal had been so reserved, it seemed unlikely he would have mentioned Elizabeth to this woman, but she needed to be sure.
Indeed, neither Anna’s name nor Elizabeth’s seemed to register.
“My name is Johanna. I’ve … I’ve been going by Stannarius,” she said, her eyes dropping.
“Of course you have,” Elizabeth said. “I think I can help, if you would permit me.”
“Why would you want to help me?” She seemed more confused than suspicious.
“In one regard, I have occasion to be sympathetic.” Elizabeth smiled gently and glanced down at her own midsection.
“I am fortunate in my circumstances and think it most regrettable that Mr. Moore is unwilling to do his duty. I have a summer home not far from here, and a dear friend there whose family has lived on this coast for generations. They know the sorrow of losing loved ones at sea. I will need to speak to her, but I am certain she will assist you. May I ask where you’re staying? ”
The woman did not speak for a moment. Anna suspected she resisted becoming an object of charity, indebted to a woman she had never before laid eyes on. However, as she had made clear, she was without choices. She closed her eyes and let out a defeated sigh.
“At a boardinghouse. I don’t know how long I’ll be there. We were there as a married couple, but you know how word gets ’round. The landlady will probably turn me out, too.”
“I think you are safe tonight. Will you let us walk you there? I will speak to my friend and come back tomorrow.”
Clever, Anna thought. Elizabeth could have just asked for the name of the boardinghouse, but being seen in Elizabeth’s respectable company would mitigate against the outcome Johanna feared.
She shook her head slightly, as if she wanted to reject Elizabeth’s offer, but once again, she acquiesced. “All right. Thank you.”
The boardinghouse was in a shabby quarter of town, but it had a small, well-kept yard. Several people were gathered on the porch.
“You may tell them I knew the father’s family,” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “That I heard what happened and came to see you. Do you understand?”
The woman nodded, unaware it was the truth, but able to see the advantage. When they reached the gate, Elizabeth turned to her and took her hands in her own.
“Again, I am very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Stannarius, but I am glad I saw you, and we will be back tomorrow.” Elizabeth spoke with a hint of familiarity for the benefit of the spectators.
They watched as Johanna ascended the stairs, nodded somberly to the people on the porch, and entered the boardinghouse.
Elizabeth said nothing as she and Anna returned to the steamship landing and purchased their tickets back to Haven Point, but she was the picture of agonizing grief, her face slack, her inside brows turned up.
On the steamer, they found seats in a quiet corner of the ladies’ cabin.
Elizabeth sat by the window again and looked out, silent and deathly still.
It was not until they had left the harbor, and the steamer began to wend its way among the islands, that she finally turned to Anna and took a deep, shaky breath.
“I saw Calvin in Portland a few days ago.”
“Had you seen him since…?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I had not laid eyes on him since he left that summer.”
Anna knew she meant the summer he stopped writing her.
Elizabeth’s mouth trembled, and she looked out the window again.
“I can hardly bear to think of how I behaved when I saw him. He was so kind, so earnestly curious to know how I was, but I was stiff, formal. Finally, he said, ‘Liz, why are you being this way?’ I said I knew it had been many years, but I could hardly forget how he had ended things with me, without even the courtesy of an explanation.”
Elizabeth turned to Anna now. “He looked at me a moment, and then it was as if something had dawned on him. He said, ‘Liz, I never stopped writing you.’”
With a terrible, blinding clarity, Anna understood what had happened. “So, Clarissa…” she began, a dangerous edge in her voice.
“… intercepted the letters,” Elizabeth said.
“Cal even tried to call on me in Cambridge that September, but she said I was engaged to Jerome Demarest. We weren’t, not yet.
She merely told him what she wished to make manifest. When Cal later heard we were married, what was he to think, other than that she had spoken the truth? ”
A tear ran down her cheek. “He asked, ‘How could you have thought that of me, Liz?’”
“Oh, no…” Anna put her hand on Elizabeth’s forearm. Before Mother died, she and Father had told Elizabeth they approved of the union, but only wanted them to wait until they were a little older. Calvin and Elizabeth were all but engaged by the summer in question.
“It was fair of him to ask. The only answer was that my pride got in my way.”
“But you were so young, Liz. And what an act Clarissa put on!” When Calvin’s letters stopped coming, Anna immediately suspected their stepmother.
Clarissa, however, had acted angrier than anyone.
She even threatened to see Calvin’s family and demand justice, which Elizabeth forbade her to do. “She was too clever, too wicked.”
Elizabeth did not look convinced.
“You were looking for Johanna today, weren’t you?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Calvin was alone when I saw him outside the shipping office, but I spotted them later when I was waiting for the steamship. They did not see me.”
“What do you hope to do for her?”
“The Grahams have that cottage on the other side of the peninsula. It’s not occupied now.
She could stay there.” The cottage, built by some ancient Graham relation, was rarely used, but George had kept it up with an eye on selling it when the economy improved.
They’d had guests there as recently as last summer.
“We have doctors on call, with Serena, Nora, and I all expecting, so plenty of help when the time comes. There’s not much reason to go to that side of the point, and presuming Nora is amenable, we can come up with some explanation.”
“What do you plan to say to Clarissa?” Anna relished the prospect of the confrontation.
Elizabeth shook her head. “Nothing.”
Anna was stunned. “But you must!”
“What good would that do?”
It was her standard response when Anna suggested they confront Clarissa about some overreach or urged Elizabeth to stand up to Lillian.
Anna was dismayed for a moment, until she realized that this situation was different.
Elizabeth could not risk Jerome learning anything about her encounter with Calvin, or what she hoped to do for his fiancée and child.
(Anna was not sure Jerome had ever heard the name Calvin Stannarius, never mind knowing what Calvin had been to Elizabeth.
Either way, he was hardly likely to approve of Elizabeth’s plan.)
“You are very kind, Elizabeth. Mother would be proud,” Anna said.
Nora came through, and arranged everything in her usual competent way, and after the baby came a week later, Johanna’s mother relented and agreed to take her daughter and granddaughter in. As far as Anna knew, Jerome never heard a word about it, and Elizabeth had never spoken of it again.
Anna wondered if something in Elizabeth had broken when she learned what she had lost through Clarissa’s deceit. She could not remember seeing an ounce of spirit in her sister since.
Anna was glad she had found a way to earn some money. If Elizabeth was not even willing to fight for her daughter, she certainly wouldn’t fight for her sister.