Avon, Massachusetts
It was a gray, late afternoon in the melancholy autumn of 1861. Thick fog had seeped up from the docks to spread all over the great city of London. In the mean, twisted streets close by the docks where the families of seamen and shipbuilders lived, the yellowish cloud was at its thickest. Already both pedestrians and vehicles were having difficulty getting about the area, and most of the public houses had lit up their windows. Gas lamps on street corners glowed bleakly in the fog and could be seen only a short distance.
In a ramshackle, two-story wooden house in one of the streets near the Gregg and Kerr Shipyard a young woman was busy at the kitchen stove. Becky Lee, an attractive, golden-haired girl with large, wistful blue eyes and an oval face. She wore a pert cap and apron over a dark dress as she opened the door of the oven to check on the progress of a kidney pie which she had prepared.
The aromatic odor of it satisfied her that all was well. The kidney pie would be ready when her father arrived home shortly from his work as a laborer in the nearby shipyard. Since the death of her mother a year earlier, the nineteen-year-old Becky had taken charge of cooking the meals and looking after the meagre flat in which they lived. Her sister, Peg, only a year younger, was a lively, rather vacant-minded redhead with a pretty face of a milk complexion dotted with a charming array of freckles. Peg had never been as interested in studies or housework as her older sister. Instead, she spent much of the time mooning over herself in the small mirror above the dresser in the bedroom which she shared with Becky.
“I want to marry a rich man and live in a big house,” she’d often confided to Becky as she stood by the mirror. And looking into it with a satisfied smile, she’d added, “And my beauty will make it easy!”
“Don’t be all that sure!” Becky had warned her. Becky was the realistic and hard-headed one. Her father had much the same easy-going dreamer’s personality of his younger daughter. He had once aspired to being a shopkeeper, but he hadn’t the talent for it. He had wound up a common laborer in the great Gregg and Kerr shipyard. “You’re full of dreams like our Dad, but like him you haven’t the ambition and drive to see them through!”
Peg showed indignation at this time. The pretty girl grimaced and flounced her shoulder-length auburn curls. “You’re jealous of me, I do believe! You’re afraid I might marry better than you!”
She would then laugh. “That’s the last thing I worry about.” Then she’d go on to tell Peg, “You need guidance. Perhaps a good, steady boy like Bob Reeves!”
This would cause Peg to indignantly inform her that she would not be satisfied with poor Bob, who worked side by side with her father and had a widowed mother and several younger brothers to help support. He lived in the same street of small, ancient houses and twisting cobblestones. Perhaps because he’d shown more interest in Becky than Peg, the younger girl always spurned the idea of his showing interest in her.
On this grim afternoon with the aroma of the kidney pie following her into the sparsley furnished parlor of the flat, Becky came upon Peg seated in the one armchair they owned reading a tattered copy of the
London Illustrated News
which she had spread on her lap.
Becky reminded the younger girl, “Time for you to be getting the plates on the table! Dad will soon be back from the yard!”
Peg glanced up at her indignantly. “Plenty of time for that! I’m reading the story of the Prince Consort’s death! Real sad it is! Victoria’s taking it badly!”
Becky’s pretty face showed impatience. “We’ve enough misery here on Blade Street without having to get so worked up over the Royal Family!”
Peg stood up and stared at her in a shocked fashion. “Why that’s almost unpatriotic of you! And unkind as well!”
“I don’t mean to be unkind,” she said. “But I do think too much is being made of Prince Albert’s death. There were many who didn’t show such fondness for him in life. I think we should tend to our own affairs and let them do the same!”
“I had to borrow this magazine from old Mrs. Cardel,” Peg said unhappily. “We never have enough to buy more than an occasional paper.”
“Go on now and set the table,” Becky replied angrily. “Dad doesn’t like to have to wait for his food after a hard day at the yard!”
“The yard!” Peg said with disdain. “That’s all people living in this street think about!”
“The shipyard provides the food on our table and the clothes on our back,” Becky told her younger sister.
Peg looked over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen to set the table, “Scraps on the table and rags on our backs!” she said. Becky was going to follow her to the kitchen and answer her sharply but decided not to. Their father would soon be home, and she didn’t want him to find them quarreling. He deserved better than that after toiling long hours in the shipyard. He had seemed to lose much of his interest in life and had gone down hill physically since the death of their mother. She worried much about him and tried hard to make him as comfortable and happy as possible.
Her mother’s illness and death had made her postpone her plans for finding a position as sales clerk in some kind of shop. She knew her limited education and coarse manner of speech made her ill-equipped for the more genteel establishments, but she thought she might find a position in a bakery or a fish monger’s place. She meant to try as soon as she could, since the extra money she would earn would at least clothe her and pay for her food.
She had no idea what Peg intended to do—beyond her wild dream of marrying someone rich. Becky found this a little sad and wished that it might be possible, but she knew life too well to believe it could happen. She hoped that perhaps Bob Reeves would pop the question to Peg, or failing that, that her younger sister might also find employment somewhere.
These thoughts ran through her mind as she listened to Peg noisily setting the table in the kitchen. She paid no attention to this, though she might have normally reprimanded her sister. Instead, she went to the window of the ground floor flat, in the four-story house and gazed out into the fog-ridden street. The yellow cloud was so heavy that everything was dripping from its dampness. Figures hurried by like shrouded ghosts.
She was about to turn from the window when she heard a voice in the distance. She halted, thinking she recognized it. Then as the voice came closer she realized it was the shrill voice of Jimmy Davis, the dwarf who worked with her father at the shipyard. It was Jimmy’s peculiar talent that he could climb into the smallest cranny when it was needed, and do jobs which ordinary men could not manage. He and her father had become good friends, and Jimmy often smoked a pipe or two by their fireside after the evening meal.
Now he was coming running down the street and shouting. And as he reached the house, she knew that he was calling out her name, in a kind of wailing fashion, “Becky! Miss Becky!”
She threw open the door, and he came stumbling down the dark hall to face her in the doorway. Her blood chilled as she stared at the little man and asked, “What is wrong, Jimmy?”
There were tears on the dwarf’s weathered cheeks. He was hatless, and he looked up at her sadly, his graying hair in disarray. He said, “There’s been an accident!” He had a fearful expression on his bearded, but not unpleasant face.
“Go on!” she implored him.
“Oh, Miss Becky,” he said sobbing. “I ran here all the way, and now I don’t want to be the first to tell you!”
“I must know!” she said, feeling sick with apprehension. “An accident? What sort of accident?”
“Your father, poor Barney,” the little man said. “He fell from a high scaffolding. All the way to the bottom of the yard. He was dead when we got to him. Died right away.”
A pale-faced Peg had emerged from the kitchen and asked in a frightened voice, “Is it father?”
Becky put an arm around her for comfort. “Yes,” she said in a taut voice. “Father was killed in a fall! There’s just the two of us now!”
“No!” Peg said brokenly and pressed against her sobbing.
Little Jimmy Davis had recovered from his own sorrow a little and stood gazing up at the two girls awkwardly. He said, “I was-confused. I didn’t want you to hear it from a stranger.”
“You were right, Jimmy,” Becky said, trying to suppress the tremor in her own voice, fighting to hold back her own great sorrow for the sobbing Peg’s; sake. “Father would have wished it so. He would have wanted us to hear it from a friend.”
“Thank you, Miss Becky,” the little man said. “Is there anything I can do?”
She soothed the sobbing Peg and then asked quietly, “When will they bring him here?”
“They’re on the way now,” Jimmy said. “A half-dozen of the best lads bringing him here on a stretcher. You’ll be wanting to lay him out in the parlor, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Becky said, feeling it all had to be a bad dream from which she would awaken in a moment. None of it true, all part of a frightening nightmare. “You’d better go to Gower Street and fetch Mr. Longbeck, the undertaker. We’ll be requiring his services.”
“I’ll go at once,” the dwarf said, turning.
“Tell him to bring the same sort of coffin he supplied for my mother,” she called after the little man.
Jimmy was already at the front door. “Aye! I’ll tell him!” And he vanished in the fog.
Barney Lee lay in his plain coffin in a corner of the tiny parlor looking more at rest than at any time since he’d lost his wife. Mr. Longbeck in his shabby black suit and high hat draped with black crepe had done his usual efficient work on the dead man. The coffin was not lined, but Becky had found a small silk pillow beloved by her late mother, and it seemed suitable that her father’s head should rest on it. His worn but almost handsome face showed no sign of pain.
The dwarf, Jimmy Davis, wiped a tear from his eye as he sat on a stool near the coffin and said those very words, “He could well be asleep!”
The soft light of the flickering candles in the room seemed suitable for the occasion. Peg sat very still and silent, obviously still suffering from shock. It fell on Becky to greet those coming to pay their respects and offer them cups of tea. The women of the neighborhood, her mother’s friends, came first, a somewhat worn and haggard group familiar with life’s sadness. One hesitated to whisper on her way out, “He is at peace! It is you girls who are to be worried about.”
Becky listened, and with her pride coming to her rescue, she said, “Don’t worry about us. We’ll manage. I have plans.” Which wasn’t precisely true but would suffice for the moment.
Then her father’s fellow-workers came shuffling in to pause a moment by the coffin and make some uneasy comment. They tried to show their sympathy, but they were a rough lot who for so long had repressed their emotions that they now had hardly any to call on. Tongue-tied and embarrassed, they came and quickly left.
The funeral was held the next morning with a drizzle of rain and the remnants of the fog. Their father was buried in an old churchyard in the district through an arrangement with Mr. Longbeck, who had found a place for their mother to rest in the same burial ground.
As the small crowd which had assembled melted away and the half-drunk grave-diggers began to fill in the grave, the old Vicar of St. Quentin’s shook their hands and wished them well. Then he walked off like one lost in his own thoughts.
Only then did the sallow and gaunt-faced Mr. Longbeck remove his crepe-decorated black top hat and bow courteously. In his nasal voice, he said, “I have not bothered you young ladies with the monetary side of this sad business. Now, I fear, the time has come. Let me tender my accounting of it all.” And he rummaged in an inner pocket and produced a folded statement which he passed to Becky.
She opened the statement and studied it. While it seemed fair enough, it was several pounds more than she’d expected. She glanced at the thin man. “It cost more than my mother’s funeral,” she pointed out.
Mr. Longbeck looked embarrassed. “True, dear girl. But in the matter of a year my expenses have risen most grievously, so I have no choice but to pass the increases on.”
Becky folded the bill. “I understand,’ she said quietly. “You need not worry; you will be paid.”
Mr. Longbeck coughed politely. “When, dear lady?”
She said, “Within the week. My father would wish it done promptly.”
Mr. Longbeck’s gaunt face at once became brighter. “That will be most satisfactory, my dear. Most satisfactory!” He put on his top hat and glancing back at the grave diggers who’d almost completed their task of filling in the grave, he said, “I think it all went very well, do you not agree?”
“I agree, Mr. Longbeck,” she said tautly. “And now, if you don’t mind, my sister and I would like to be alone. We need quiet.”
“Of course,” the thin man said sympathetically. “Within the week then!” And he bowed and marched out the cemetery gate.
Peg, still sick and pale, found her voice and said, “What a horrible man! I expect he charged us double what he should have!”
Becky sighed. “Hardly that, but enough! More than we have, as a matter of fact.”
“What shall we do?” Peg stared at her with concern.
“We shall manage,” Becky said firmly as they began to leave the cemetery, walking towards the street nearby. “Father would want it so, though we shall likely have to give up the flat and sell our furniture.”
“Sell the furniture!” Peg wailed. “Where can we go without furniture?”
“We must find positions where rooms are provided,” Becky said. “Perhaps in the household of some rich family. We will have to seek work as maids. This may be your chance. You’ve always wanted to marry a rich man! Maybe you’ll meet one this way.”