The Loves of Leopold Singer (38 page)

“Miss Fiddyment, hello again. Let me properly welcome you to our little community.” Like the mayor, Mr. Singer bent to kiss her hand. A brief shadow flickered over his eyes as he saw her shoes. “I trust Mrs. Grasmere is well?”

“She is improved this last week, yes.”

He was as lovely up close and in the light as he had been at the lectern or driving the dark carriage. He engaged with everyone who greeted him. Igraine tried to calm herself. This would be an amusing story to share in her next letter to April.

The next morning Mrs. Grasmere called Igraine into her room to take breakfast. “Was the lecture interesting?”

Igraine couldn’t say much about the speech.

“I see you’ve fallen under the spell of Mr. Leopold Singer, our Great Benefactor,” Mrs. Grasmere said.

“He is impressive.” Igraine thought she showed polite indifference. “Do you not like him?”

“I do indeed. I see him with the eyes of an old woman. I’m immune to his manly charms. His wife is a great beauty. I’ve never heard her speak, so I can’t testify to her manners. But his are perfect. And he truly has benefited Shermer Landing—and myself as well. It was through his influence the lecture hall was built. He made The Post over into something worth reading. Of course it is still full of gossip and scandal, which makes Old Kate happy. But he also reprints some of the great pamphlets from Revolutionary times, and his editorials call on our better angels. He’s a true public servant.”

They developed a routine. Igraine breakfasted with Mrs. Grasmere and reported on her outings of the day or evening before. She dined with Mrs. Fuller, who was happy to have someone new in the house to talk to. If Igraine had a late meal, it was alone in her room; otherwise, she took refreshment at one of the lectures or meetings she attended.

In the first month after Igraine’s arrival, Mrs. Grasmere improved dramatically. She was often able to sit up in bed and converse. If the day were fine, they would take a meal in the garden. On her own initiative, Igraine attended public meetings of the Education Committee, a citizen’s group established by Mayor Adams. She would never teach again, but she was interested in the new theories on education.

“Have you met Bronson Alcott?” Mr. Singer asked her once. “I believe he is at Boston. Cambridge perhaps. His ideas regarding the instruction of infants are quite exceptional.” He spoke of the need for a school for girls in Shermer Landing. She felt impelled to volunteer her services, but loyalty to Mrs. Grasmere saved her. Igraine had more free time than she’d ever dreamed of, but not enough to run a school.

When a letter from April referenced their toast to the captain’s mansion, it was the reawakening Igraine’s imagination needed. She secretly began to write wild and romantic stories full of dashing sea captains and pirates and damsels in distress and lords of the manor.

Life was wonderful. Igraine’s stories filled her with romance. Her work gave her friendship and the satisfaction of being needed. Her civic activities and Mrs. Grasmere’s library engaged her intellect. No small thing, the food at Grasmere House was so good and so plentiful that a womanly shape began to form over her bones. For the first time in her adult life, Igraine wore clothes made to fit her own body.

But again death robbed her of her happiness. Mrs. Grasmere’s health failed for the last time.

Winter’s bitter cold endured. Every fireplace at Grasmere House was lit round the clock, but Igraine took her writing desk down to the kitchen, the warmest room in the house. “Cook, will you mind if I write letters at the table?” The warmth came not only from Cook’s ovens, but from the women gathered there.

“Come in, Miss Fiddyment.” Cook brought her a cup of hot coffee from the pot always kept on the stove.

None of them were secure in their positions, but when Igraine had wondered aloud where she might go, Mrs. Fuller insisted she stay to manage the correspondence involved with Mrs. Grasmere’s death.

Mrs. Fuller had a novel open. Books were a prescriptive against the madness steals in on winter’s inactivity, and she’d been reading
Waverly
aloud to them all. While Old Kate plucked a chicken and Cook worked bread dough, Igraine took out paper and ink from the writing desk to compose responses to the many letters of sympathy that had arrived. Mrs. Fuller was right, someone had to do it. There had been no word from Solomon Grasmere.

“Mr. and Mrs. Grasmere had the happiest marriage I ever saw.” Mrs. Fuller picked up the previous conversation.

“And now they are together in heaven,” Old Kate said.

“If I were guaranteed a man as good as Mr. Grasmere, I wouldn’t mind being married myself,” Mrs. Fuller said. Igraine’s pen stopped, and Old Kate’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again though no sound came out. “I may as well confess,” Mrs. Fuller said. “There is no longer any reason to keep quiet. My name is not ‘Mrs. Fuller’ at all.”

“Wait,” Cook said. She beat the dough with stepped-up ferocity, deftly molded it, set the ball near the fire and covered it with a cloth. “Continue.”

“When I first came to Grasmere House,” said the woman who was not Mrs. Fuller, “Mr. Grasmere got it in his head that I was someone else, a Mrs. Fuller who was expected from New York to be the housekeeper. Well, I was from New York, but I was no Mrs. Fuller. I had come to Shermer Landing to look for work. It was in ‘89. General Washington had just become the first President of the United States, and anything seemed possible.

“I had learned Grasmere House wanted help. I came to the kitchen door, and she that was Cook before you, Cook, invited me in out of the cold. Mr. Grasmere saw me and, genial as you please, said ‘Mrs. Fuller, we are so glad you have arrived.’ He gave me a tour of the house himself, told me how sorry he was that I was widowed so young—I was only eighteen then—and how he hoped I’d be happy at Grasmere House.

“My mouth wouldn’t work to set him to rights. For days, and then weeks, I lived in terror of the real Mrs. Fuller showing up. I suppose I hoped to do well enough they would want me in another position, though in a just world they’d toss me for the liar I was. But Mrs. Fuller never came. And I found that I liked being a widow. I found that a woman is held in higher esteem having been married even briefly than never having been married at all.”

Cook gave everyone more coffee. Old Kate looked sideways at Igraine.

“Oh!” Mrs. Fuller’s face turned red. “Oh, dear. Miss Fiddyment, forgive me. I meant no—oh, dear.”

“Do not cause yourself any pain on my account,” Igraine said. “You’re right. An old maid is an object of disdain everywhere she goes.”

In that moment, Mrs. Fuller had her Grand Idea.

“But what is your real name?” Old Kate said. “What should we call you?”

“My name was Winifred Jones,” Mrs. Fuller smiled, the bubble of the Grand Idea taking on more solid form. “But I’ve been Mrs. Fuller far too long; it would feel unnatural to be called anything else.” The Grand Idea was now as clear as if it had stepped from behind a cloud. Mrs. Fuller nearly laughed.

It was so obvious what should happen now: Mr. Solomon Grasmere must return, and immediately, before Miss Fiddyment got away. He must fall in love with Miss Fiddyment and marry her and life could go on as always. And, Mrs. Fuller truly believed, Mr. Grasmere and Miss Fiddyment would both be happy in the bargain.

“I hope I have the kind of luck you did,” Igraine said. “This correspondence is nearly complete, and I must look for a position.”

“You can’t think of leaving us,” Cook said.

“Not before things are settled,” Mrs. Fuller agreed. “You must write to Mr. Grasmere and tell him he is needed here. Surely some ship out in Boston Harbor will meet up with The Sheepshank soon enough. Until he returns, you must see that Grasmere House will fall apart without you.”

Even crusty Old Kate, devastated by the loss of her good old lady, nodded.

Igraine considered that she had nowhere else to go. She said, “But I have no place here, no purpose now. I no longer earn my keep.” She suddenly felt very tired and sad.

“Titch,” Mrs. Fuller said. “Why not start that girls’ school you are always talking about? We have plenty of room. And the earnings can pay to run the household until Mr. Grasmere’s return.”

Mrs. Fuller was simply correct, and there was nothing more to say.

Igraine wrote to April to beg her to come teach at the Young Ladies Academy. They would share Igraine’s room. Cook moved in with Mrs. Fuller. No one dared ask Old Kate to double, or perhaps no one wanted to try to sleep any closer to her musical snores. At all events, she kept her room solo. The groom and the gardener already lived above the stables, so there were no males living in the main building.

Igraine went to The Post to place a notice of the school’s opening. On the day the advertisement first appeared, the newspaper ran an editorial in praise of the endeavor, a part of which read:

Our great pride in this magnificent land comes not from what we have accomplished but from the conviction that we will accomplish more. We live in the Age of Knowledge, and men of coming generations will continue to be measured not by birth rank but by individual virtue. Will excellent sons be raised by mediocre mothers?

Shermer Landing is most fortunate in Miss Igraine Fiddyment, a woman of impeccable character with whom I have had the pleasure to discuss the modern educational theories. I have every confidence that our daughters will learn from her all that is practical and moral by which to manifest the angel in the house. We must all wish for our young ladies the best preparation for that happy day when they themselves become wives and mothers. I know that, when the time comes, I shall with gratitude enroll my own daughter in Miss Igraine Fiddyment’s Academy.

She went straightaway to the newspaper to thank Mr. Singer.

“Miss Fiddyment, a pleasure.” He came out to meet her. She still felt nervous in his company, his perfection so near to her imperfection. He was married, and she desired nothing from him. She only wished she didn't find him so attractive.

“How are enrollments?” he asked.

“I am sure they will swell when your editorial is read. I came to thank—oh!” She had reached out to shake his hand, and he had done the same; but instead, he pushed her off the walkway into a puddle of water.

“Miss Fiddyment, I am an oaf,” he said. “Your feet are drenched. Come, we’ll take care of you.”

He led her inside. In no time, she was seated in front of a fire, and his hands were at her boot hooks.

“I’m sorry, Miss Fiddyment, but I must remove your shoes to dry them.” She thought she would die of embarrassment. Her heart raced. Several young men had come out to see what was going on. They smiled congenially as if nothing was at all amiss.

“Why, it is Miss Fiddyment.” Mayor Adams was there. “How pleasant.” He kept speaking while Mr. Singer removed her second waterlogged shoe. “I’ve just come with an article about the law school.”

“Law school, Mr. Adams?”

“This is your doing, Miss Fiddyment,” said Mr. Singer. “For years, the Education Committee has talked and met and harrumphed about establishing a law school in the town. Then you, a woman alone, up and start a young ladies’ school. You’ve shamed the committee into action, madam.”

Igraine tried to keep breathing. His hands on her feet made her woozy. She wished she had got around to buying a new pair of shoes to replace these old, patched things.

“Sir.” One of the young men handed Leopold a piece of clean newsprint. He put the paper on the floor and pressed both Igraine’s bare wet feet onto it, then returned the sheet to the lad who hurried away with it. It was the oddest thing.

All the while the men made conversation as if this very strange sequence were not going on before their very eyes.

She was no less flustered when she felt her shoes being put back on again. She felt, more than watched, Mr. Singer close the hooks. She wished the feeling would go on forever. “I guess they were not so wet as we had supposed.” He pulled her to her feet. As she stood, her weight forced more liquid out of the shoes.

“Would you like a tour?”

“No, thank you.” She had to get out, back to reality, back to sanity. Her shoes squeaked and squished as she retreated.

“You must bring your young ladies some time to observe the making of a newspaper.”

“That is most kind.” Splish, squeak.

“Not at all. I have a personal interest in your success, you know, on two accounts.”