Chapter 25
“It is astonishing what force, purity and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.”
Margaret Fuller
“Oh! Miss Manners!”
“Yes, Miss Burke?” Marigold immediately left contemplation of Antiphon’s tetralogies to come to the little woman’s aid. “How may I be of service, ma’am?” She made a quick scan for any urchins that might need banishment.
“Mrs. Dana has come to call for you, but she went straight up to your room, even though I told her it was against regulations. She didn’t even wait for tea!”
“My apologies, Miss Burke.” Marigold put a consoling hand to the tiny woman’s shoulder. “I fear Mrs. Dana is a force of nature that none of us could contain. But not wanting tea—that is grave indeed. I will attend her immediately.”
And indeed, Marigold all but ran up the three flights to the fourth floor to find Isabella already pouring herself a sherry. “Hello, darling.” Marigold kissed her cheek. “Drinks for breakfast? What’s the occasion?”
“You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning. I’ve poured you one too,” Isabella said, pointing to the stem of fortified wine next to a chair. “You’re going to need it.”
Marigold knew Isabella well enough to take her at her word. She took up the sherry and sat down in the chair. “Let’s have it.”
“I hate to be the continual bearer of bad news, but this time it’s the infamous Morning Standard.” Isabella passed over a tabloid newspaper. “They’ve pipped their rival Boston Evening Journal to the wire.”
Marigold felt as if she knew what she would see before she looked.
And indeed, splashed across the cover of the Morning Standard was a photograph in which Olivia Thayer might be said to be gazing adoringly at Imogen Currier.
The one Lucy must have seen in Professor Currier’s room.
The one which Marigold now knew depicted a young, impressionable niece gazing adoringly at the doting aunt who was opening up the world to her talents.
But like the Boston Evening Journal before it, the Morning Standard had predictably gone for the lowest hanging fruit. The caption under the photogravure—which was curiously uncredited—read, ‘The Boston Marriage Made in Wellesley?’
“Damnation.” Marigold gave vent to her feelings with a curse.
“Indeed,” Isabella agreed. “Crudely but accurately put.”
Marigold’s concern immediately turned to both the college and President Irvine, but also to Professor Imogene Currier herself.
She could only imagine how deeply the barely veiled innuendo of the tabloid would hurt her and her sister.
By her own admission, Professor Currier was deeply attached to Olivia Thayer—as any aunt might be to an only niece.
And even without that familial tie, as any teacher might be to a prized pupil—as President Irvine was attached to Marigold, helping to shepherd her academic career.
But President Irvine was shielded by her marriage.
Neither Professor Currier, nor the college itself, had such protection.
Without even reading the whole of the article, Marigold knew what it would undoubtedly say.
What did one expect from such a place, with all those women closeted up together?
That it was unnatural for women to prefer each other’s company.
That women’s minds were made by God to be weak, and that the college could only do them irrevocable harm.
And that some prominent local clergyman or physician had long warned that for every woman’s college, the citizenry was going to have to erect two insane asylums and three hospitals.
No matter that Julia J. Irvine’s career as an exemplary scholar—as an undergraduate student, she had outright won prizes in Greek language and literature over men at competing academic institutions—and as a clear-headed leader and tough-minded Quaker moralist stood in direct and shining contradiction to such nonsense.
Still, it was printed. And people like Professor Currier—and all women in a similarly vulnerable position—were hurt.
“It always has to be salacious with them, doesn’t it?”
Marigold’s question was purely rhetorical, but Isabella answered anyway. “Facts don’t sell papers, darling, stories do. I thought your Mr. Matthew White at The Argosy would have taught you that by now.”
“Oh, I suppose it is a lesson that I learned a very long time ago, long before either Mr. White or The Argosy magazine, but it nevertheless never fails to disappoint. Listen to this drivel.” Marigold read from the accompany article.
“ ‘A gentleman in the know, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells us that Wellesley College is a breeding ground for the ‘Boston Marriage.’ ‘It is well known,’ he says, ‘to be a gathering ground for ladies of certain unnatural instincts.’ ” Marigold’s personal feeling boiled over into outrage. “Of all the unmitigated slander.”
“Naturally,” Isabella observed dryly. “One would think it is positively libelous. But of course, the source is anonymous and they have used all the usual words—‘tells us,’ and ‘it is said,’ and such rot, which lets them lie as they like, while serving to protect them from prosecution.”
“Naturally,” Marigold fumed. “Poor Professor Currier. The deceased was her niece, so all this Boston Marriage nonsense is not only woefully mischief-making but woefully wrong. I wonder if I should go to her at her boardinghouse, to check on her? She seemed so frail the last time I saw her, I fear this might do her some great damage.”
“Her boardinghouse? But Lucy Dove is there and will look after her, surely? She’s eminently sensible and eminently capable.” Isabella nodded confidently. “Lucy’s got an exceptional head on her shoulders. You need have no worries.”
Marigold had no idea that Isabella even knew Lucy well enough to make such an assessment of her character. It was a very true assessment, but nonetheless. “But Lucy may not understand the psychological implications,” she fretted.
“Don’t sell Lucy short, darling,” Isabella countered. “I feel certain you can have complete faith in her.”
“Well, short of rushing back over there, I suppose I must.”
“You must. Now.” Isabella put her chin up in the air in an attitude Marigold recognized as rather dangerous for whomever Isabella had in her sights.
“The best way to combat such slanderous falsehoods is to meet them head-on while appearing not to care a whit, nor believe for any moment that they are true. You know.” She struck a careless pose.
“ ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling!’ That sort of thing.
But you’ll need a tame reporter to print your version of the story: ‘Wellesley girls, as red-blooded as any American girl.’ That sort of thing.
Perhaps your Mr. Wilkerson can finally make himself useful.
” She cast what Marigold interpreted as a slightly jaundiced eye her way.
“Or were you cultivating him for some other reason?”
“No, you have me exactly—I had hoped to make use of him,” Marigold admitted. “But he has sadly not come up to scratch. I already tried to feed him an article, but it never ran in his paper.” Marigold pulled a face. “I must be slipping.”
“Or he was feigning his interest from the first. He’s certainly feigning something,” Isabella finished under her breath.
This had never occurred to Marigold. That the man had tried to flatter and flirt his way into her good graces, she had accepted as the natural product of her panache. That his interest had been false from the start— Well, surely she hadn’t slipped that much!
“I might try to contact him, but …” For the first time, Marigold realized she had no notion of where to find him—Cab’s efforts at the Boston Evening Journal had already proved fruitless.
“I’m sure he’ll simply turn up like a bad penny.” Isabella stood. “I don’t trust him. I don’t like him, and I certainly don’t like his untoward attention to you.”
“You don’t like anyone who isn’t Cab.”
“Naturally,” Isabella rejoined. “I have standards.”
Marigold could only smile. “So you do. And, as it turns out, so do I.”
“Now that is the first good news you’ve had for me in days!”
“We shall see,” was all Marigold was prepared to say with regard to Cab. “But what ought to be done, if anything—”
“Marigold?” It was Ethyl, looking blustery from her usual morning walk. But today, instead of holding a particularly interesting leaf or rock, she was holding a copy of a tabloid newspaper.
Marigold sighed. “Please don’t tell me the Boston Evening Journal is trying to rival the Morning Standard’s low version of yellow journalism?”
“Close but no cigar for the little lady. Or not so little lady,” Ethyl corrected herself. “You have stature.”
“Thank you.” There was no reason to abandon one’s manners, no matter the circumstance. “But what is it?”
“The Morning Standard.” Ethyl tossed the folded paper into Marigold’s lap. “And they have outdone themselves. It’s a doozy. But I can see I’m bringing you old news.”
“Indeed, but I thank you anyway.” She really was blessed with wonderfully loyal friends. “May I introduce you to another of my dear friends? Mrs. Isabella Dana, meet Miss Ethyl Rautencranz, scientist and all-around good egg.”
“Now you go on!” Ethyl beamed even as she held out her hand to shake. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Dana.”
“Likewise,” Isabella said. “Call me Isabella—all my friends do. Marigold is a marvelous judge of character, so now we’re to be friends as well.”
“Well, I’m just luckier than a rabbit in a briar patch,” Ethyl enthused.
“Ethyl is from the south.” Marigold clarified.
“And I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.” Ethyl pulled a face. “Did you read what they said all the way through? They’re implying a Boston Marriage.”
“Yes, I saw that.”
“But did you read it all the way through to the end? To where they’re implying that the professor killed that girl because she was thwarted in love? The professor, that is, not the girl. Down at the end.” She pointed to the very last paragraphs.
“Damnation,” Marigold swore. Not that she herself was blameless. Hadn’t she originally thought Professor Currier might have done exactly what the paper implied—that she might be a thwarted older woman in love with an innocent younger girl.
But now Marigold was livid with the injustice of it all.
Especially since the photograph seemed to offer visual proof of such a dynamic—the photo had captured nothing more than Olivia Thayer gazing admiringly up at Imogen Currier, who steadfastly faced the camera, seemingly unaware of the younger woman’s adoring gaze.
“No need to ask who took this photograph.” The proof was in the intimacy so thoughtfully captured, even if E. Anthony’s name was absent from the bottom of the photo.
“She is a convincing sort of creature, isn’t she, that Eliza?”
Marigold gaped at Ethyl. “Don’t tell me you’ve sat for her?”
“I have.” Ethyl confirmed without any evasion. “Sent the photograph to my grandmother, home in St. Augustine, as a present, where it was well received. Glad I did it, anyway. Can’t speak for the others.”
“How many others do you think, have posed for her?”
“A great many, since her charge for the sitting is a pittance—less than a cup of cocoa at one of the tearooms in town. You only pay for the printed photograph if you like it enough to buy it from her,” Ethyl considered. “Not cheap, but not exorbitant. A fair value, as far as I can see.”
“But this,” Marigold insisted as her outrage overtook her. “This selling of photographs without the sitter’s permission—for I cannot imagine that Professor Currier should have consented to such a thing—is highly unethical.”
“Then I should imagine it is highly profitable.”
Trust Ethyl to get right to the heart of the matter.
Marigold tried to calm herself into thinking as logically as her friend. “I imagine you are entirely correct.” Hadn’t Eliza Anthony herself said she needed the money? Which begged the question. “So just what else do you think she’s been selling? And to whom?”
“Shall we go see?” Ethyl suggested.
“Yes.” Marigold firmed her resolve. “Let us do just that.”