Mercer Girls Read online

  Father shook his head slowly, his brows drawn down in disgust. “I will tell Norris Stilton that you’ll be glad to marry his son. And the sooner it’s done, the better—for your own sake, before you do something so rash your reputation cannot be saved. You’ll wed Marion Stilton next Sunday, and I’ll hear no more about it!”

  Dovey screamed her defiance at her father—screamed until her throat felt red and raw. “I’ll leave you first! I’ll run away! You’ll never see me again, do you hear? Never, never!”

  When the reverberation of her shrieking voice died away, Dovey heard the slow tread of Father’s feet ascending the stairs. She clutched again at her swollen cheek, her heart pounding in sudden fear. But when Father reached the upper floor, his face was as blank and smooth as the naked walls of the parlor. He reached for her, and Dovey quailed. But he only laid his palm on her shoulder and pushed her gently backward into her bedroom.

  The door closed, shutting Father from her sight. Dovey heard a faint, metallic jingle, and then, with a cold clutch of horror, the grating of a key in the lock. The lock’s tumbler seemed to clang as loud as a church bell as it turned. Then the key withdrew, and Father’s footsteps receded, slow and deliberate, down the staircase.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TRUE WOMEN ONLY

  After a quarter of an hour, the tears had dried on Dovey’s cheeks, leaving behind a prickle of salt that itched ferociously and irritated the tender skin where Father’s blow had landed. The discomfort of it made her angry—at herself, not at Father. How could she have lain on her bed, caterwauling into her pillow like the useless, spoiled girl she was? Weeping had gained her nothing. Even her heart felt no better; it was sick and hollow and sad, and if anything, it beat with a rhythm more desperate than before.

  Dovey scrubbed the memory of tears from her cheeks with the cuff of her sleeve. A mill girl wouldn’t sit around whining, or weeping her eyes to blindness. A mill girl would face her troubles head-on … do what needs must. If ever there was a time for Dovey to prove that she was the equal of any girl in Lowell, this was the hour.

  She sat up on her bed, folded her hands in her lap, and tried her best to take stock of her situation. But no matter how she admonished herself to stay calm, to think through this mess clearly, her heart pounded with anger toward Father, and her arms and legs shivered at the injustice of her predicament. Finally, unable to sit still and remain rational, she sprang to her feet and paced the length of her dim, empty bedroom.

  A thick tallow candle stood on a bare shelf; she took up a little packet of matches and lit it on one of her circuits around the room, for twilight had gathered and shadows crowded in through the curtainless window, reaching for her with a promise of dark despair. Dovey wouldn’t give in to tears—not again. Tears wouldn’t make a way out of this mess. She would allow herself to feel all the rage she could muster—but not one stitch of despair.

  The candle’s light opened around Dovey, blossoming like a golden flower, and she stood at the very center of its unfolding, watched the flame’s energetic flicker. Its ring of light was like a shield—it pushed the night, and Father’s demands, far away. Within that golden circle, in a tiny world of private possibilities, Dovey stood alone. She looked down at her hands again. In the ever-shifting candlelight, patches of shadow and bursts of golden brightness flowed across her fingers, her wrists, the places on her palms where she could still make out the faint impression of her nails. Her hands did not look soft or weak now. In this changing light, she thought she could hold any future at all—any life she chose—and it would fit just so between her palms. She could carry any burden with ease.

  But where would she go, and what would she do? There was no work for her in the mills—that much was plain, after a week of searching. Besides, anywhere she went in Lowell, Father would surely find her. She would never be free of his scorn, or the pressure to wed Marion Stilton, until she left Lowell entirely.

  I could go to Mother in Boston. For a moment, the decision crystalized, then hardened, in her heart. Yes—that’s exactly what I’ll do.

  But she knew that word of her whereabouts would soon get back to Father, and Mother wasn’t strong enough to prevent the marriage. In fact, Mother might even approve of the idea, if indeed a marriage with the Stiltons could bring Father’s mills back to life.

  No, not Boston. As Dovey stared into the flame, she saw the way it must be. She had no choice but to remove herself from the reach of both Father and Mother. New York, then. Or somewhere else entirely. But someplace far off, where neither of her parents could find her.

  And then, with a sudden jolt of inspiration, Dovey knew exactly where she would go.

  Days past—on the first day of her search for work—she had happened upon the town square, where a man stood at a podium, holding court to a crowd of men and women who murmured behind their hands at the odd things he said. At first, Dovey had kept well to the back of the crowd, far more amused by the racy comments the men of Lowell had made—and the shocked giggles of the women—than by the speaker’s words.

  But soon enough she had grown bored with the gossip and turned an ear toward the stranger. The man’s speech began to pluck at her, word by word, phrase by phrase, until she felt compelled to push her way through the crowd to stand at its very front. There she remained, watching Asa Mercer in captivated silence. He was dressed as sharply as any businessman, and his hands lifted from the podium, emphasizing his words with elegant precision as he spoke rapturously of the rugged beauty of the frontier—of the great and honorable work that needed doing there. And Dovey recalled now with a significant stillness in her middle, Asa Mercer had said that only women could do that particular work.

  When the dapper man’s speech was concluded and the muttering crowd dispersed, Dovey noted the litter of leaflets, printed on creamy yellow paper, discarded on the cobbles. She snatched one up and stuffed it in her skirt’s pocket without reading the thing. She had paid no mind to the leaflet from that moment on, but now she flew to her closet and rummaged through the few dresses that remained to her until she found the one she’d been wearing that day—the light-blue wool with the laced pagoda sleeves. She clawed at the voluminous skirt, biting her lip, fighting to quell the panic that flared in her stomach. Perhaps she had taken the paper out and tossed it into the kitchen stove—the thing had seemed so insignificant that she might have gotten rid of it without thinking. She bit back a sob of mounting fear.

  Then she heard the leaflet crinkle.

  Dovey yanked the paper from the dress pocket, clutched it close to her heart, and crowded close to the candle. The block print stood proud and dark on its field of wrinkled, torn paper, and as Dovey read the words, she heard them ringing in her head like a clarion.

  SEEKING

  Unmarried Women of TRUE and QUALITY Character

  to venture into

  WASHINGTON TERRITORY

  and there Aid in the Settlement and Civilization of

  the City of SEATTLE

  High-Minded TRUE WOMEN Only need apply!

  seeking Teachers Especially for the schooling of Children & University men

  SALARY to all TEACHERS $75.00 per month

  apply to A. S. MERCER at 108 Merrimack Street no later than 12 March

  departing Lowell, Mass. 13 March from rail depot

  Travel fare $250.00

  Dovey’s breath caught in her throat. The pounding of her heart in her own ears muted the rumble of carriage wheels outside, and the desultory chirrups of the crickets who had been lured from hibernation by the early thaw. Her fingers had gone numb. This was the night of March twelfth. It was surely too late to apply. She bit her lip as she estimated the time: half past six—more likely, it was nearly seven. Even if Father hadn’t locked her in her room, Dovey knew she couldn’t make it all the way down to Merrimack Street in time to catch Asa Mercer.

  With a helpless sob, she crumpled the leaflet in her fist. But the candlelight still danced with an optimistic glow, and Dove
y still stood within its cheery circle. The calm resolve of absolute determination stole upon her, settled on her soul like a warm cloak in winter, soothing and plush. She breathed deep, then smoothed the wrinkled paper against her thigh and studied its words again.

  Washington Territory. It was certainly far away. Clear on the other side of the continent, in fact. There would be precious little danger of Father tracking her down. Mr. Mercer’s party of women would leave tomorrow. Dovey had no way of knowing when they would depart Lowell, but she knew from where. And she was sharply determined to be waiting at the train depot when A. S. Mercer arrived, even if she had to stand all day in the cold and the mud.

  The travel fare, though … two hundred and fifty dollars! Once, the Mason family could have managed the sum with ease, but now it was certainly beyond Dovey’s reach.

  Unless …

  Dovey’s gaze unfocused against her bedroom wall, then traveled reluctantly down to the dark, bare boards of her floor. She crept from the candle’s protective light and dropped to her knees near the wall, her skirt and petticoats pillowing around her. She found the loose floorboard and pried it up carefully with her nails. Below, in the space just above the parlor ceiling, lay her little cache of treasures—memories—the things she had salvaged from Father’s desperate greed.

  When he’d sold off the silver candlesticks, Dovey had known at once that Mother’s jewelry would follow. She couldn’t bear the thought of Mother losing all the baubles she loved, and so Dovey had sorted through her jewel boxes, picking out the pieces she knew to be Mother’s favorites and leaving the rest for Father to ravage. Dovey had always intended to give the jewelry back to Mother, a welcome-home gift when she returned from her convalescence. On that grand day, Dovey imagined, Mother would be healthy, glowing a rosy pink once more, and all the pallor of consumption would be as distant a memory as Father’s loss of the mills.

  Dovey examined each treasure in turn as she pulled it from the gap in the floor. The emerald teardrop earrings; the bracelet of small, starry diamonds; bits of filigreed silver; and a long, delicate chain of buttery gold. She stroked the soft, coral-colored cameo pendant she had so loved to see her mother wearing ever since her childhood days. The cameo featured the profile of a woman in white stone, but the face did not look as fine and dreamy as Dovey had remembered. Now it seemed icy—scornful—and Dovey closed her fingers around the pendant so she could not see the little carved woman’s face, nor feel her mother’s disapproval at the desperate act she was considering.

  I have to do this, Mother, she said silently. Please understand.

  Shaking with shock at her own audacity, Dovey clambered to her feet, the last of her mother’s keepsakes clutched in her hands. She spread them on her rumpled bed, then tore off a corner of her sheet and tied the jewelry in a small, compact bundle, which she shoved deep into her skirt’s pocket. She pulled her pillow from its linen case, and felt the sharp quills of the pillow’s feathers pricking her hands, insistent little stabs, as if from a devil’s pitchfork. She tossed the pillow aside.

  There’s so little time. Dovey had never before packed her bags for a journey of any length, let alone for a cross-continental abscondment. She forced herself to take slow, calming breaths, and tried to imagine all the goods and particulars she might require. But in truth, Dovey had no idea how long the journey to Seattle might take, nor what challenges it might entail. Would she be exposed to weather? Had she to walk any great distance? Would she be expected to present herself well, as a young woman of good breeding—or would plain and even shabby clothing suffice?

  She reasoned it was better to be safe than sorry, and so she pulled the blue, pagoda-sleeved dress from her closet—the finest she still owned. Folding it neatly would have taken nigh on an hour, it had so many pleats and frills. Instead, Dovey wadded the dress into the bottom of her pillowcase and mashed it hard with her fist. Its generous skirt took up half the available space, even when she tamped the blue wool down firmly with her foot.

  An extra chemise and two fresh drawers followed the blue dress into the bag. The rest of her clothing she would have to leave behind, save for the green dress she still wore.

  She dropped to her knees inside her closet, and threw open the lid of her little wooden hygiene box. There she found the muslin belt she used for her monthlies. She wrapped it around a handful of her old cotton pads and the packet of pins that secured them to the belt. She wedged the bundle deep into the pillowcase, then tossed in her comb, a plain netted snood, and a few simple ribbons and hairpins. Last of all, she packed her straw hat with the long blue streamers. She could just hold the ends of her pillowcase closed around the fat, heavy bundle.

  Her impromptu travel bag packed, Dovey sat back on her heels and eyed her bedroom door. How to get out? She might shout for her father, and then when he unlocked the door, bull past him … but no. Despite his advancing years, John Mason was a large man, and far stronger than Dovey. She realized that she would have only one chance to get away, and could risk neither capture nor the discovery of her plan. If Father puzzled out what Dovey intended, he might drag her off to the church that very night and shackle her to Marion Stilton for all eternity.

  She turned to consider her bedroom’s tall, narrow window instead. Outside, the fullness of night had arrived, heavy and thick as a velvet cape, banishing the last smoke-gray tones of twilight. Beyond the house’s stone wall, through the bare limbs of the two gnarled old oaks that guarded the gate, Dovey could see the street, long and level, gleaming dully like a sheet of beaten copper in the glow of gas streetlights on their tall iron posts. Night had fallen indeed, but the hour was still early enough, she prayed, that she might make her escape. But she knew she must act quickly.

  Dovey pulled her skirt and petticoats up, wrestling them over one shoulder. She worked frantically at the ties of her crinoline, cursing each time the knots slipped from her grasp, for her fingers were stiff and clumsy from the chill of anxiety. Finally, though, the heavy, bell-shaped cage of steel and muslin dropped from her hips, landing on the bare floor with a resounding clank. Dovey held her breath, hoping the sound hadn’t alerted Father. But after a few moments, when the hall outside her room remained still, she stepped out of the crinoline and let skirt and petticoats fall. Walking without the crinoline was a cumbersome chore; the heavy folds of her skirt and underthings draped against her legs, pressing her knees and shins with their layers of ruffled lace. And without the crinoline to flare her garments outward, both skirt and petticoat were too long by several inches, and dragged beneath her boots.

  Dovey issued an indelicate curse, but she saw at once what she must do. She pulled a pin from her hair and stabbed at the edge of her green wool skirt, six inches above its hem, then worked the pin back and forth until she could fit her fingers into the hole. The wool ripped with a tremendous hiss; Dovey pulled the entire hem away, ignoring the ragged threads that hung down from her skirt’s ruined edge. She attacked both petticoats next, leaving a heap of ribboned lace on the floor beside her crinoline.

  Then, biting her lip against rising panic—time was already so short—Dovey set to work on her bedsheets, jabbing holes with her pin and tearing the linen sheets into long strips. These she knotted well into a series of hand-and footholds, then she wound one end of her makeshift ladder into a large, messy tangle and tied it as securely as she could.

  Dovey wrestled the sash of her window upward. The night was calm and quiet, but the air bit with a reminder of the winter’s chill. She tossed her embroidered cape around her shoulders, then placed her stuffed and straining pillowcase carefully outside the window, on the projection of shingles that roofed the front porch below. The pitch of the roof was not steep, and after giving one alarming tip toward the street, the pillowcase came to rest and sat waiting for Dovey to follow it out into the night.

  She took a final look around her bedroom. It was empty of everything now, except her sorrow. The candle still burned, its circle of light dancing and flitting o
ver the bare slats of the floor, the featureless walls. Dovey crossed to the shelf and blew out the flame. The room was plunged into darkness.

  She bent, and, working by feel alone beneath the concealing edge of her torn petticoats, she tied the unknotted end of her sheets around one ankle. The moment had come. She was on her way to Washington Territory—and by God, she would get there, one way or another. Her heart began to pound again, and with each insistent beat of her pulse, the place on her cheek where her father had slapped her burned hot and red.

  “Good-bye, Father,” Dovey said to the darkness. Then, as she braced her hands on the windowsill, she thought, We’ll see who slaps the hardest.

  The bedroom window wasn’t much wider than Dovey’s shoulders. She worked her slow way over the sill, squeezing her body through inches at a time, feeling the scrape of hard wood through the layers of her bodice and underthings. Her weight pressed down against the sill, causing the whalebone stays to bite hard into her flesh. She resisted the urge to cry out in her pain, and resisted, too, the temptation to move faster, to kick her feet and flail her arms. It would do her no good to catch Father’s attention with careless thumping about or thrashing on the rooftop. Dovey gasped and panted until she was light-headed, for her corset would not allow her to breathe as deeply as the work demanded. Many times she found herself tangled in the folds of cape or skirt, and she was obliged to wiggle and squirm until she could move freely again. But at last she spilled through the window, and crouched on the porch roof beside her bundled pillowcase while the ache from her hard stays dissipated.

  When she felt somewhat recovered, Dovey untied the sheet from her ankle, then pulled it slowly through the window until the large knot at its other end rested just inside the sill. She eased the sash down quietly, closing it just at the knot’s edge. The makeshift ladder of torn sheets draped over the edge of the roof, silvery-blue and obvious as sin against the uniform dark of night. The sheets did not quite reach to the ground below, but Dovey figured it was close enough. She pulled the open end of her pillowcase snugly closed, gripped the fabric in her teeth, and crept on hands and feet to the roof’s edge. Then she turned carefully in her mass of pleats and ragged-edged ruffles, and prepared to descend over the edge.