The Firebrand. Susan Wiggs
had sat frozen in a state of dull shock while the estate liquidators had carted off the antiques, the furniture, the art treasures. Lucy and her mother had been forced to sell the house, their jewels, their good clothing—everything down to the last salt cellar had to go. By the time the estate managers and creditors had finished, they had nothing but the clothes on their backs and a box of tin utensils. Viola had taken ill; to this day Lucy was convinced that humiliation was more of a pestilence to her than the typhoid.
There was nothing quite so devastating as feeling helpless, she discovered. Like three bobbing corks in an endless sea, she and her mother and the baby had drifted from day to day.
Lucy had found temporary relief quarters in a shantytown by the river. She would have prevailed upon friends, but Viola claimed the shame was more than she could bear, so they huddled alone around a rusty stove and tried to bring their lives into some sort of order. Not an easy task when all Viola knew in the world was the pampering and sheltering of her strong, controlling husband; all Lucy knew was political rhetoric.
It was providence, Lucy always thought, that she’d been poking through rubbish for paper to start a fire, and had come across a copy of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, published by Tennessee Claflin and her sister, Victoria Woodhull, known in those days as The Firebrand of Wall Street. Since she’d appeared before Congress and run for president the year of the Great Fire, the flamboyant crusader had captivated Lucy’s imagination and inflamed her sense of righteousness. But that cold winter day, while huddled over a miserable fire, Lucy had read the words that had changed the course of her life. A woman’s ability to earn money is better protection against the tyranny and brutality of men than her ability to vote.
Suddenly Lucy knew what she must do—something she believed in with all her heart, something she’d loved since she was a tiny child.
Everything had fallen into place after that epiphany. In the fast-recovering city, Lucy had taken a bank loan, leased a shop in Gantry Street, occupied the small apartment above it and hung out her tradesman’s shingle: The Firebrand—L. Hathaway, Bookseller.
Running a bookshop hadn’t made her a wealthy woman, not in the financial sense, anyway. But the independence it afforded, and the knowledge that she purveyed books that made a difference in people’s lives, brought her more fulfillment than a railroad fortune.
The trouble was, one could not dine upon spiritual satisfaction. One could not clothe one’s fast-growing daughter with moral righteousness. Not during a Chicago winter, anyway.
Silky, the calico cat they had adopted a few years back, slunk into the room, sniffing the air in queenly fashion. Maggie jumped down from Lucy’s lap and stroked the cat, which showed great tolerance for the little girl’s zealous attentions.
“Run along, then,” she said, kissing the top of Maggie’s head. “Tell Grammy Vi that I’ve gone down to the shop.”
“And bicycles later,” Maggie reminded her.
“Bicycles later,” said Lucy.
Tucking the paper under her arm, she took the back stairs down to the tiny courtyard behind the shop. A low concrete wall surrounded an anemic patch of grass. A single crabapple tree grew from the center, and just this year it had grown stout enough to support a rope swing for Maggie. The tiny garden bore no resemblance to the lush expanses of lawn that had surrounded the mansion where Lucy had grown up, but the shop was just across the way from Lloyd Park, where white-capped nannies and black-gowned governesses brought their charges to play each day. When the weather was fine, Maggie spent hours there, racing around, heedless of the censorious glares of the governesses who were clearly scandalized by hoydenish behavior.
Lucy allowed herself a wicked smile as she thought of this. She was raising Maggie to be free and unfettered. No corsets and stays for her daughter. No eye-pulling braids or heat-induced ringlets. Maggie wore loose Turkish-style trousers, her hair cropped short and an exuberant grin on her face.
But sometimes, when she wondered about where she’d come from, she asked hard questions.
Lucy took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and walked into the shop. The bell over the door chimed, drawing the attention of Willa Jean.
“Good morning,” Lucy said cheerfully. No matter what her troubles, the very sensation of being in the middle of the bookstore, her bookstore, lifted her heart. There was something about books. The smell of leather and ink. The neat, solid rows of volumes, carefully catalogued spine-out on the shelves. The lemony scent of furniture oil on the tables and the friendly creak of the pine plank floor. The gentle hiss of gaslight, the scratching of Willa Jean’s pencil. Most of all, Lucy supposed, she loved the sense that she stood in the middle of something she’d built, all on her own. She’d spun it out of a dream, dug it out of disaster and lavished her love upon it the way many women did when building a home.
This was her home. And if, from time to time, she felt an ache of loneliness that not even Maggie could fill, she still told herself she had more than most women could expect in a lifetime, and she should be grateful. Those secret yearnings shamed her. She was supposed to be a New Woman, fulfilled by her own industry.
The one thing she couldn’t figure out was how a New Woman dealt with needs as old as time. In certain quiet moments, the old loneliness stole over her. With veiled envy she watched young couples strolling together or stealing kisses when they thought no one was watching. Too often, she caught herself yearning to know a man’s touch, his affectionate regard and his passion. The one drawback to free love, she’d discovered, was that with so many choices available, no man seemed likely to choose her.
“’Bout time you got yourself down here.” Willa Jean peered accusingly from beneath the green bill of her bookkeeper’s cap. “We got to go over the figures for the bank.”
A cold clutch of apprehension took hold of Lucy’s gut. She’d had the entire weekend to prepare for this, but in fact she’d tried not to think about it. Perhaps that was a bit of her mother coming out in her. If she didn’t think about troubles then they didn’t exist.
But here was a problem she couldn’t wish away.
“All right,” she said. “Show me the books, and tell me exactly what I should say to the bank.”
Willa Jean flopped open a tall ledger on the desk in front of her. Willa Jean was as clever with numbers as her sister Patience was with scripture. Willa Jean was gruff, blunt and usually right.
This morning, her bluntness was particularly apparent. “If you don’t get an extension on your loan, you’ll default and lose the shop,” she concluded.
Lucy pushed her hand against her chest, trying to still the wing beats of panic there. “I don’t expect the bank to cooperate. Our loan was sold to the Union Trust three months ago.”
“All banks are the same, girl. They want to make money off you. Your job is to prove you’re a good risk.”
“Am I a good risk, Willa Jean?”
A bark of laughter escaped the older woman. “A bookseller? Honey, it ain’t like you’re selling grain futures here.” She gestured around the shop. “These are books, see? People don’t eat them, they don’t manufacture furniture out of them, they don’t keep them to increase in value. They read them. And who has time to read? Everyone’s so all-fired busy trying to make a living, they don’t read anymore.”
“So my job is to convince a strange man that I can make a profit in a dying enterprise.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Remind me. Why did I get up this morning?”
Willa Jean held out an appointment card. “There’s the name of the person you’re to see. It’s the bank president, girl. At least that’s something.”
Lucy glanced at the card, then froze in amazement. She was looking at a name she hadn’t seen in a very long time, but one she had never forgotten. Mr. Randolph B. Higgins.