“You’re leaving?” Annie stared at
Silas as pain struck her heart. The high neck of her brown and yellow gingham
day dress felt as if it would choke her, and suddenly her corsets seemed laced
much too tight. “Right away?” She looked around the laboratory as though it
would vanish along with him.
The heavy teak tables, scarred from
many an experiment, stood solid as ever. Beakers glittered in the electric
light. Sheets of brass and steel, spools of wire, half-finished devices lay on
shelves or tables, larger pieces stacked against a wall. An aroma composed of
ozone, carbolic, machine oil, and a mélange of chemicals gave the laboratory
its distinctive atmosphere. All carried memories of Silas. Her eyes went back
to him.
He smiled ruefully, turning his
porkpie hat in his hands. “This situation has come out of the blue, hasn’t it?
That I have a son! I never wanted to have a child. Babies always bored me, and
you know my feelings on marriage.”
Annie knew, all right. A proponent
of Free Love, Silas believed marriage to be unnatural. She put down her beaker
and wiped her hands on her heavy cotton duck apron. Reaching over, she turned
off the Bunsen burner she had been using.
Silas continued. “But this boy is
thirteen. He’s nearly grown. His mother is dead, and she was a lover of mine
fourteen years ago. The letter she sent with him says he’s mine. I can’t help
but believe it. Just look at him.” Silas waved a hand.
Annie looked through the laboratory
window again at the boy seated on the bench outside. He did indeed look like a
younger version of Silas, dark eyes and sandy hair, his features a child
version of her co-worker’s. She swallowed, her throat tight. She had secretly
loved Silas for seven years, since she earned her final degree at age twenty in
1873 and they began to work together at the Benjamin Franklin Institute for
Scientific Investigation, the scientific branch of the Secret Service. Annie
had left her feelings unspoken, keeping her silence as he romanced one woman
after another. Simply working together with him in this laboratory, where they
invented many new devices in the service of their country, had been half a
loaf, but she convinced herself to accept that. He became one of the few men
who didn’t discount her abilities and brainpower even though she was female. To
not even have the daily platonic camaraderie of working together felt like more
than she could bear.
Annie swallowed, and gathered her
courage. “I would be glad to come with you and help you raise him. I have
feelings for you, though I have never spoken them.”
Silas smiled at her, but the smile
stung her with the pity in it. “I know. But you would never consent to live
without marriage, and I will never marry.”
“But now you have a son to raise,”
she countered. “A child needs a stable home, and both parents.”
“You weren’t. He’s been raised well
enough so far by his mother alone.” Silas moved toward the door. “At his age,
he should be separating from female influences anyway. No, he and I are going
traveling together.
We’ll get to know each other. When we come back and perhaps I’ll buy a small
house and we’ll settle down, just two old bachelors.”
Or
perhaps, Annie thought bitterly, you’ll
continue cutting a swath through the ladies and living in rented spaces over
stores. And he thinks I’ll be here when he gets back, and we’ll just continue
on as we have been. No! Her pride rose in a great wave. I will not permit this situation to go on
any longer. I cannot.
Reaching for her poise, Annie smiled
and held out her hand. “I wish you all the best, of course, and the Institute
will surely miss your talents.”
Silas seized her hand, and brought
it to his lips. Annie’s heart jumped, for he had never done that before. “I’ll
miss you too,” he said. Then he put his hat back on and strode through the
door.
Annie sat down at her battered
roll-top desk, refusing to watch him through the window. She also refused to
cry. It’s time I faced facts, she
told herself. I have cried enough over
this man. He will never love me as I have loved him. I don’t believe he is
capable of it. It is time for me to make a change as well. She realized her
fingers stroked the place he’d kissed her hand, and stopped, her lips thinning
in anger at herself. I must put him out of
my mind, forever.
She took a sheet of Institute
letterhead from the stack in a drawer, uncapped the fountain pen she designed
and patented, and began to write. After signing her name, she waved the letter
in the air for a moment to dry it, folded it, and stood. Removing her heavy
cotton duck apron and donning her hat and jacket, Professor Annabelle Briggs
prepared to turn in her resignation to the
United States Secret Service. It’s too bad Ruby has been sent to
the field. She wished she could say goodbye in person to her friend, the
other female scientist at the Institute. She pulled out another piece of
letterhead and wrote a letter to be left at Ruby’s desk. Professor Darnell was
a chemist, so they rarely collaborated, but they freqently ate lunch together,
and went together to shows.
Glancing around the laboratory for
the last time, her eyes went to the spiral staircase that led to the small room
on the roof where her crowning achievement, the Aetheric Communicator, sat in
state. The Analytical Engine hummed and clicked, and her experimental Aetheric
Power Generator fizzed quietly in one corner, forming a backdrop of sound that
she had long grown used to. She would miss this laboratory for its own sake. It
had been a haven, the one place where she could permit her scientific mind to
run free without social constraints.
One door of her laboratory let out
into the plaza that connected the assorted buildings that comprised the
Benjamin Franklin Institute for Scientific Investigation. The public would
never be informed that the investigation also covered numerous covert
operations. The Civil War and its concurrent industrial revolution had solved
many problems but created many more. The creation of a Free Negro State and the
designation of the Great Plains as permanent Indian territory had not been
without dissent. Aid to the defeated South had blunted some of it, but even
some who agreed with freeing the slaves felt that forty acres and a mule were
sufficient. Proponents of Manifest Destiny believed the Indians didn’t deserve
their own land either, but President Grant had been adamant, and President
Hayes had continued his policy, saying, “We just fought a war to ensure that
all men, whom the Declaration of Independence states are created equal, are in
fact treated equally. I feel the best way to begin is to provide education, give them their own territories, and let them
make of both what they will.”
Walkways paved the plaza between
grassy areas containing trees and flowers. In the center stood a bronze statue
of Benjamin Franklin. Annie glanced at it, and couldn’t help smiling as usual. His
expression seemed to have a hint of mischief in it. From what she had read of
him, it probably did.
Dark green marble veined in glittery
white floored the entrance to the offices. That and the dark wood dado,
beige-on-white Federalist wallpaper above, made Annie think of a bank. Past the
echoing entrance carpeting created a hush. Locked doors barred the wing that
held Willie’s. Only those who knew the door code could enter. Annie punched the
code, turned the heavy brass lever, and the door swung open.
Willie’s office held oversized
furniture, chosen because of his freakish height, six feet four inches. Dark
well-polished mahogany filled the room, the chairs upholstered in rich maroon
and pine green. The walls had been painted a warm cream, the window shades made
of heavy fabric the same color. Currently they were raised to let in sunlight.
As the windows were mirrored on the outside, no one could see inside during the
day. At night, when the light inside reversed the mirror effect, the shades
were pulled.
Willie Barnes was an old and dear friend of hers. Her brother Daniel
had been the first director of this
division, and Willie one of
his finest agents. Now her brother lay in the churchyard and Willie ran the Institute.
Wordlessly she handed him her resignation. He
looked it over. “I’m not
surprised, after Silas’s news. In his case, I accepted his resignation. In your
case, I won’t.”
Annie,
shocked, started to protest. “Willie, I must….”
Willie held
up a hand. “Hear me out. Frankly, I don’t want to lose you. You’ve been the
backbone of this laboratory since before you left high school. ‘Genius’ doesn’t
begin to touch the gifts you have. What I’m going to do is give you a leave of
absence, with an indefinite amount of time. Get away, take a vacation somewhere
lovely, and get over Silas Laird.”
“He’ll very
likely come back,” she said. “I don’t want to work with him anymore.”
“And if he
does, I won’t rehire him, that’s a promise.” Willie met her eyes, and his were
serious. “He’s brilliant, but erratic. He can’t be counted on. And in these
troubled times, we need reliable scientists doing the work here. He’ll have to
find a position elsewhere.” Willie
frowned. “If he wasn’t such a womanizer, he’d still make a good field agent.”
“Thank you,
Willie,” she said, her voice choking. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate
this.” Or how badly I need it, she
thought.
Willie stood
and came around his desk. To Annie’s surprise, he hugged her. “I watched you
grow up. Sometimes I feel as though you’re my sister as well as Daniel’s.”
Once that
statement would have devastated her. As a teen, she had quite a crush on
Willie. Handsome, with dark curly hair, dark eyes, and a cleft in his
chin, he turned heads wherever he went, and had a perfectly endearing
streak of shyness. Physically the
strongest man she’d ever met or even heard of, his incredible strength had come in handy many times when he’d
been a field agent. He could carry a grown man in a suitcase and make it look
as though the case held only clothing. Now, she felt only sisterly towards him.
“My worst regret at resigning would have
been missing you, Willie,” she murmured. “I feel you have become my
brother in spirit.”
He released
her, and returned to his chair. “Now go, book one of those new pleasure cruises
somewhere delightful, and have some fun.”
“I will,”
she told him, smiling though her eyes burned.
After she
left, Willie called in his secretary, a
plump fortyish women in secretarial black. Her thick spectacles and severe hair
disguised a sharp mind. “Please send a secure message to Maximilian Hamilton.
I am in need of my best agent.”
“Yes sir,”
she replied, and left to secure a
messenger from the pool.
Willie
steepled his fingers together and smiled, thinking, Sending Max just might solve two problems at once. We shall see. At the
very least he’ll make sure Annie stays safe.
Annie took the streetcar home this time. Her brother had given her the ingrained habit
of varying her
transportation daily. Her home stood in a
row of modest three-story brownstones on a pleasant tree-lined street. The area
wasn’t Society, but mostly held comfortable businessmen and their families.
When their parents passed on, Daniel had selected this area to raise his baby
sister, who had been a surprise of his parents’ middle age not long before
their deaths. Annie didn’t remember her parents’ home, just this one. After
Daniel had been killed on an assignment, she continued to live there alone but
for her maid and cook. The neighbors had known her from childhood. She knew
they all kept an eye on her. Her neighbors, all excellent friends for her
lifetime, felt a spinster living along but for a cook and a maid needed a bit
of looking after. The men frequently brought over servicemen of one type or
another to check on her furnace, her chimney, and other things they didn’t
believe a woman could handle. The women visited bringing handwork and
conversation, making sure no one damaged Annie’s reputation.
Daniel decorated their home in a
more spare style than the current fashion, as he hadn’t seen the need for a lot
of bric-a-brac. Neither did Annie. The house abounded in books. Where other families
would have had a china figurine, the Briggs household had a pile of books.
Instead of Godey’s Ladies’ Book and Theater Weekly, science journals lay on
the coffee table. Her maid had expressed
gratitude for the ease in dusting. After six years alone, a few feminine
touches had made their way in, many of them gifts from female neighbors such as
crocheted doilies and embroidered antimacassars.
“Professor!” Her maid, black-haired
Pegeen O’Riley dropped her feather duster. “You’re nivver so early! Is it sick
you are?”
Annie smiled at her. “No, I’m fine.
We’ve had an upset at work, and Willie thinks I should take a vacation.”
“Why, isn’t that a splendid idea? Haven’t
you had yer nose t’th’ grindstone since I’ve worked here?” Pegeen picked up her
feather duster. “Where is it you’ll be going, then?”
“I think I’ll take one of the new
pleasure cruises. I’ll take the train to Florida, and leave from there. A
cruise going south, perhaps. Those lovely South American islands, if I can get
a cabin.”
“Well, won’t I stop me dustin’ and
pack for you? Yer trunk and portmanteau?” Pegeen tucked the duster into the
waistband of her apron and patted her hair. A useless gesture, for a multitude
of pins held the coronet braids firmly in place.
“Yes, please. And lay out my
traveling suit.” Annie considered for a moment. “Goodness, I don’t know exactly
what I’ll need. Best pack all my clothes. The trunk’s certainly large enough.”
Pegeen whirled away into the
kitchen, no doubt to put the duster away in the scullery and alert the cook. A
thin woman, she always moved as though the world depended on her being quick.
Annie smiled when her elderly cook
Lucy Simmons came out, wiping her hands on her apron. She had been the cook as long as Annie could
remember. Her taffy-colored hair had faded slowly to gray and her face had
acquired more lines, but she was basically unchanged: stout, grandmotherly, and
a superb cook. A lifetime in American had softened but not erased her Yorkshire
accent. “Lucy, I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. Your pay will of course
continue in my absence, though you’ll only be cooking for yourself and Pegeen. I’ll
compose a letter to my accountant at once.”
“Tha’ needn’t worry, Miss Annie.”
Lucy’s broad red face split into a smile. “We’ll watch over the place and keep
everything in order. Have tha’self a wonderful time.” She looked wistful for a
moment. “A cruise! How modern. Ships are so much more comfortable than when I
came from England. Tha’lt send me some postcards for my collection?” Typical
Yorkshire directness. She and Pegeen would have clashed if Lucy hadn’t become
accustomed to indirect ways of the Irish from the succession of Irish maids
they’d had.
“Of course, Lucy!” Annie reassured
her. “Anything you want.” She went over to hug the woman. “For goodness sakes,
you’ve always been the closest thing I’ve known to a mother. I’d bring you
anything you cared to have.”
“Tha’rt a dear girl!” Lucy
exclaimed, and hugging her in return. “Tha’ own mother would be so proud.” She
chucked Annie under the chin as though she were still a child. “Tha’ be careful
traveling, and have tha’self a grand time.” Releasing Annie, she turned and
walked slowly back to the kitchen.
Stepping into the drawing room,
Annie went to the desk. Composing a letter to her accountant informing him of
her plans and instructions took only moments. A cab would be necessary, because
she’d have to stop at the bank for travelers’ checques as well. She smiled for
a moment at her fountain pen. Such a simple device, yet it had changed the
process of writing forever. People were already calling them Briggs pens, to
her deep embarrassment. She sealed the letter and took it with her upstairs to
her bedroom.
There, Pegeen whirled so quickly
from the chest of drawers to the trunk that her skirts were still turning
toward one while she turned toward the other. Looking around, Annie realized
that she had become truly a creature of habit. The same four-poster bed, chest
of drawers, and washstand had furnished her room since she outgrew her baby
bed. The wallpaper had been replaced only once, changing the old-fashioned
flowers on white for a modern fern pattern in two shades of green. When she
began to wear her hair up, Daniel had given her a pier glass in an oak frame to
hang between her windows and a dressing table with stool and tabletop mirror.
The only other changes had been taking her old doll house to the attic to make
room for these accouterments of young ladyhood, and the changes of books.
Her simple work dresses hung on pegs
behind curtains of cotton rep fabric. Her best clothes were folded with sprigs
of lavender in the dresser. Pegeen had already laid out her traveling suit on
the bed and smoothed the wrinkles.
Looking over the items on her
dressing table, Annie made sure her handkerchief case and brush and comb set in
its case were going into the portmanteau along with nightclothes and changes of
body linen. She considered her jewelry case for a moment, then put it in as
well. Most of her jewelry was quite useful in sticky situations. None of it was
simply jewelry.
“Will ye be havin’ yer ball gown,
Professor?” Pegeen asked, reverently stroking the turquoise silk.
“Yes, and the matching headdress.
Now which hats?” She studied the shelf with her hatboxes then selected her
favorite to pack and the one that went with her traveling suit to wear. “These should be sufficient. Oh, pack the day
dresses as well, and put one into the portmanteau. And an apron. One never
knows.”
“Is it south you’re headin’? Then
you won’t be needin’ yer winter things,” Pegeen mused, hovering over the drawer
where her woolens lay.
“South it is. Leave those, then.”
Annie picked up the latest science journals from the floor by her bed and
tucked them into the portmanteau. She had purchased a just-published novel, Ben Hur: A Story of the Christ by author
Lew Wallace, the current governor of New Mexico Territory, and hadn’t started it. She added that. Surely
there would be time to read, on the train and a cruise vacation. Unbuttoning
her day dress, she began to change clothes. Her traveling suit, a golden
brown serge with silk piping in turquoise, was very plain in style, with a small bustle and only one ruffle on
the overskirt. To go with it she had a straw boater trimmed in turquoise
with ostrich feathers. Considering her hat pins, she selected the pair that had a hidden tranquilizer
dart. One never knew.
Pegeen had
finished packing. “Won’t I go and summon
a cab, Professor?” To Annie’s relief, she had grown used to
her mistress’s independent ways and no
longer offered to help her dress. The maid ran from the room, and Annie
assembled her garments. The body linen
she had put on that morning would do fine with her traveling suit. She put on
her underskirt, overskirt, and basque, settled her hat onto her head and
anchored it with the hatpins. Deciding she needn’t change shoes, she picked up
her gloves and small leather bag.
Willie had
only mentioned a cruise off the top of his head, but it sounded so wonderful she couldn’t think of another plan. Fresh
ocean air, the company of strangers out only for a good time, and the wonderful
food ships provided sounded like a lovely break from all the intrigues of her
work and life.
Before long the horse-drawn cab arrived. The driver clumped up the stairs
to get her trunk. Pegeen startled him with Annie’s elevation device. “Hasn’t the Professor invented a grand thing,
then? Don’t ye only have to put her trunk in this?” Pegeen slid back the
section of wall to reveal a box. “Then won’t it slide so smooth down to the
back hall? And won’t you save all them steps luggin’ the heavy thing?” She
twinkled her bright blue eyes at his surprise. “Isn’t my mistress an inventor?
Doesn’t she come up with the cleverest things to save work? Ah, the contraption
she came up with to wash an’ dry the clothing! Nearly does itself, it does.”
The cab carried Annie to her bank, her accountant’s office, and then to
the train station where she booked a sleeper car to Florida. Once she arrived,
she would see about open cabins on
cruise ships. Pictures of the Caribbean Islands, the Lesser and Greater
Antilles, had been in the news as one of the new cruise destinations. She had
even purchased stereopticon cards
of some of the sights. Hopefully, she thought, there would be an opening on one
of those ships.
Of course ships
could be had much closer to Washington D.C., but her years in the Secret
Service left her with a natural inclination to cover her tracks even though
she’d never been a field agent. She purchased her tickets using the name Mrs.
D.L. Smith. For the rest of the day she sat in the train’s observation car,
looking out the window and chatting casually with other passengers. A red-haired
middle-aged woman in a very fashionable
traveling suit of gendarme blue damassée
sat near her in the observation car. The
underskirt had two plaited
ruffles, headed by two puffs of plain silk. Fringe edged the skirt, and she wore her shirred bodice with a belt.
Isabelle-yellow and gendarme-blue ribbon and feathers trimmed her Tuscan straw hat. Despite
making Annie feel positively dowdy by comparison, she proved a delightful companion.
They commiserated about their
unfashionable hair color. Both had grown up wearing blue or brown and were
tired of both colors.
“I love
turquoise,” Annie offered. “And I think it suits my coloring well. Autumn
colors make nice accents, but of course one can’t wear an entire garment of
rust or gold, at least not in the daytime.”
“Rust!”
exclaimed the other woman, a Mrs. Travis. “Heavens, doesn’t that clash with
your hair?”
“No, it
seems to blend. I find blues make me look pasty, except for turquoise and
teal.” She smiled. “Your hair is nearly auburn. Mine’s carrots.”
Mrs. Travis
smiled gently, and reached out a hand. “I thought new copper, actually.
And goodness! Such an adorable dimple. I never saw anyone with only one. It’s
quite fetching.”
Annie took
her hand. “Thank you! But you have such
lovely pale skin, and gray eyes. I’m stuck with freckles and brown eyes.”
“But your
hair curls naturally. I have to manufacture my curls with a hot iron.” She
patted her lovely hair. “And then I must worry all the time about keeping my
hair in curl. Moist air does take all the curl out.”
Annie
smiled. “It makes mine curl even tighter. As if anyone ever needed ringlets the
size of dimes!”
A man walked by, a rolled newspaper revealing
an enormous headline: Manifest Destiny Party Stages Protest in Washington. Both
women stared at it for a moment.
“They won’t let it go,” sighed
Annie. She colored and put a hand to her mouth. “Forgive me. Politics isn’t
polite conversation.”
Mrs. Travis waved a hand. “Never
mind. The reassignment of land after the War Between the States will be
controversial for years. I doubt we’ll see agreement in our lifetimes.” She
shuddered. “But when I think of the horrible atrocities committed against the
Negroes by their former owners, I grow faint. No, separating the former
Confederacy into Caucasian states and Negro states seems the best solution. I’m
glad President Grant sent educators and agricultural specialists to all, to
assist in reconstructing all the damage done by war and relocating.”
“All relocated landowners received
equal amounts of land, often better than the land they left.” Annie shook her
head. “I can understand the hard feelings, but they were never going to accept
free Negroes as neighbors. Those horrible terrorist groups! Perhaps later, when
the wounds of slavery and war have healed. It could take generations, I
suppose.” She frowned. “Permitting slavery in America was the worst thing the
Founding Fathers ever did.”
“However, I disagree with the
president’s decision to designate permanent Indian lands.” Mrs. Travis made a
face. “Their way of life is so primitive. I can’t help but think it would be
doing them a favor to Americanize them.”
“But against their will? That is not
freedom. No, I agree that they deserve to have their own land to live as they
will. It’s better, I think, to show them what our way is like and let them
decide for themselves.” Annie smiled to blunt the force of her words. “I’m
feeling a bit hungry. Would you care to join me in the dining car?”
“No, thank you,” replied Mrs.
Travis. “I have enjoyed our conversation, but I brought a box meal with me as I
my destination is only an hour more away. I think I shall return to my seat to
eat.”
They parted amicably, with mutual
wishes for a safe and pleasant trip. Annie made her way through the jolting
train to the dining car. The porter seated her and took her order. She watched
the darkening landscape roll by, dined on roast beef, potatoes cooked with herbs and butter, a carrot salad, and dessert of chocolate cake with ice cream. Then she made her way
through the swaying cars back to her sleeper. The sun had nearly gone down, so
she pulled the blinds and took off her traveling suit. In the tiny water closet, she washed and prepared for bed. Now alone she had time
to think, and the day’s strain all came back. It took her a long time to fall
asleep. So many memories paraded through her mind, and so many of them made her
eyes burn.
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