No one among the family, even Mr. Stirling, an amateur collector of Scots artifacts, had seemed to know.
2.
Mina Raumlicht?—from the village of Innisfail?
She was clearly a country girl, intimidated by the elegance of the Stirlings’ house—so the downstairs parlor maid took her measure at once, reasoning that, with this visitor, she need hardly be courteous.
Asking for Mr. Stirling!
In that frightened child-voice!
Since Miss Raumlicht, as she called herself, knew nothing of the master’s death, she could not be anyone of significance; no relative or acquaintance of the Stirlings’; no former employee; no one to be taken seriously. So the maid informed her brusquely that it was not possible, no she could not see Mr. Stirling; nor could she see any other member of the household at the present time, for they were all “indisposed.” But she might leave a calling card for Mrs. Stirling, if she wished. Or, she might write and post a letter . . . .
The girl who called herself Mina Raumlicht shrank slightly backward at the unwelcoming tone of the maid’s voice, yet placed herself, with childlike stubbornness, in front of the door. Her eyelids fluttered with daring, her lips trembled, yet she insisted she must see Mr. Stirling, Mr. Maynard Stirling, for it was a matter of the gravest urgency, and she had come a long distance.
A long distance?—from Innisfail? The parlor maid’s voice was edged with scorn. For Innisfail, a tiny settlement in the foothills of the Chautauqua Mountain range, could not have been more than twelve miles west of Contracoeur.
The girl’s eyes brimmed with tears. She had grown breathless; agitated; like one who has steeled herself for a grand, brash exertion requiring all her strength and courage—and cannot now retreat. She asked again if she might see Mr. Stirling and was told again, curtly, no she might not. Wringing her hands, she asked if “Maynard was at his place of work”—the expression quaintly rendered—and was told, in a harsher tone, that, no, he was not. Was he then traveling?—for she knew (she murmured faintly, with downcast eyes) that he traveled a good deal—but was told, emphatically, no—“Master is not traveling.”
Then might she leave him a message?—for him alone?
By this time, the girl in the black velveteen cloak was nearly sobbing in desperation, and the parlor maid hesitated, worrying that she might have gone too far—been too bold; though “Mina Raumlicht” of “Innisfail” could be a creature of no importance, a shopgirl or a servant girl at best, and could not get her into trouble with the Stirlings. Yet, making up her mind, with the imperviousness of an older sister sweeping away the claims of a younger, she moved forward as if to force the girl outside onto the stoop, saying, no she might not leave the master a message, for it was not allowed.
“Not—allowed?” Miss Raumlicht whispered. “But how can that be?”
“Not allowed, miss.”
But, so strangely, the girl surrendered not an inch; refused to budge from her position in front of the door; turned her delicate, childlike face at a defiant angle, and said in a whisper, words which so utterly shocked the other young woman she would recall them through her life: “You lie. You lie, and you know it; and I shall tell Maynard how rudely you have treated me.”
At this the haughty parlor maid suddenly lost her composure, recognizing that, perhaps, this girl was not a younger sister of hers, after all; but someone who might be important; one not to be trifled with, despite her youth; she relented, saying that Miss Raumlicht might come inside and take a seat in the drawing room, and she would, she said, see if the mistress of the house might speak with her.
“But it is the master with whom I wish to speak . . . .” the girl said in a softer voice.
3.
Surely it was an error. A miscopying in a document. Attributable to a clerk, or a secretary, or one of the junior attorneys, that he, Maynard Stirling, should—die?
Though the firm of Stirling, Stirling & Pedrick dealt daily in the anticipation of, the fact of, and the consequences of death among their clients, and though Maynard Stirling had years ago drawn up his will, as a responsible head of a household and a professional man of some accomplishment, it had never been very real to him except as a theoretical proposition: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But was that not mere metaphor, a poet’s turn of phrase?
And to “die” at such an ordinary, inauspicious, and inglorious moment: on a weekday morning, in the midst of the devising of a codicil of tedious complexity, in the eleventh month of contract negotiations in which Stirling, Stirling & Pedrick (representing a Chautauqua manufacturer of enormous wealth, one of the founders of the National Association of Manufacturers) were locking horns with their old rivals Bagot, Bushy & Greene (representing downstate copper-mining interests); in the midst of uttering a single choked Latin term—was it pro tempore?—it became the essence of his life to articulate, as if, in the midst of an attack of angina pectoris that threw him forward onto the conference table, and was to kill him within a few hours, he might yet save himself, save all of the universe, by successfully uttering pro tempore.
But he failed. Ignobly, choking and writhing in agony, he failed. Exactly as if he, Maynard Stirling, were not one of the most prominent attorneys in upstate New York.
What was Mr. Stirling trying to say, so desperately?
A message to his family, I think.
No, surely it was a prayer. A prayer to God, to save his soul.
At the time of his sudden death Maynard Stirling presented a striking figure to the world: solidly built yet not portly; with a solid moon of a head about which his hair, faded to a silvery hue, seemed to float; close-set, hooded eyes both kindly and shrewd. He was one of those gentlemen in whom life throbbed quick and urgent in his breast, for he knew, and had always known, who he was; and the nature of his mission on earth, as a devout Christian (he was a deacon in the First Presbyterian Church of Contracoeur), and a member of the hallowed legal profession (like his father and grandfather before him). He was an ardent Republican who yet believed, with ex-president Teddy Roosevelt, that the alarming spread of Socialism at the present time was the result of the “purblind folly of the very rich”; though, in general, Mr. Stirling was obliged to represent the rich, and to profit from his association, he did not shrink from voicing certain moderate views . . . of course condemning Socialism as the enemy, if it came to outright war. Above all he was a devoted husband and father, a loyal friend, a man of impeccable good manners and probity and God had always seemed to favor him and . . . surely it must be an error, that he should die? stricken in the midst of a mere codicil? and in the very prime of his life, in his fifty-third year?
A life of matchless integrity. Yet there was to be, kept secret by his family, something distressing . . . mysterious . . . a hint of . . . what, precisely? . . . which came, not exactly to light, then to a sort of miasmic glimmer on the very morning of Mr. Stirling’s funeral, delivered by the postman amid a stack of condolence cards:
Mr STIRLING please do not be angry again with yr. Mina that she has disobeyed one of yr. comands—but I am so fearfull of late I am SO FEARFUL of a change in me I dare not reveal to my Aunt & MUST SPEAK WITH YOU SOON. O PLEASE do not be angry at my weakness for I am scarcely myself of late & KNOW NOT WHO I AM SO craven in fear.
Yr adoring Mina
This brief message was written in midnight-blue ink in a large looping childlike hand, on a plain sheet of white stationery, the envelope postmarked “Innisfail, N.Y.”—a country village on the Nautauga River a short distance west of Contracoeur. But who was “Mina,” let alone “Yr adoring Mina”—?
This mysterious and disturbing letter was delivered to the house in Greenley Square in the morning post, and opened by the distraught Mrs. Stirling in the late afternoon; read, and dazedly reread, if not fully comprehended, as she stood in her late husband’s rosewood-panelled library in the handsome, black-laced mourning dress she had been wearing most of the day, her veiled black hat not yet removed. Seeing that his siste
r-in-law had suddenly stiffened, with an expression of baffled fright, Tyler Stirling, Maynard’s younger brother, quickly approached her to inquire what the letter was; yet even as Fanny Stirling stammered anxiously that she did not know what the letter was, Tyler drew it discreetly from her trembling fingers. With a rapid, practiced eye he scanned the offensive note, betraying no surprise or upset or incredulity; and, acting with the judicious calm for which the Stirling men were known, he folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into his inside coat pocket for safekeeping. (With similar composure Maynard Stirling had once received a note in court informing him of the birth of his son Warren, just as he was about to address a jury on behalf of his client, the plaintiff in a bitter lawsuit: betraying no hint of emotion, the attorney proceeded with his usual vigor and confidence, winning the case for his client.)
“What is the letter? Who is—‘Mina’? How dare a stranger speak with such intimacy, to—Maynard?” Fanny Stirling asked anxiously, and Tyler said, as if concluding an argument, “The letter was incorrectly addressed, and misdelivered. I suggest that you banish it from your thoughts, Fanny, at once.”
4.
Yet what a riddle it was, and how it tormented her: Yr adoring Mina of Innisfail.
In the midst of her grief, Fanny Stirling’s thoughts seized upon that childlike message, which Tyler had taken from her, and of which he would not speak. Nor did anyone else in the family know of it. It is an omen. An evil omen. God help me! The shock of Maynard’s death had rendered Fanny nearly incapable of coherent thought and speech; her doctor had prescribed liberal dosages of “nerve medicine” which left her groggy and disoriented, as if struggling to retain consciousness in the midst of a dream; and what a battalion of Stirling in-laws, relatives, friends and social, business and political acquaintances the family had to contend with—! Even as her sons Warren and Felix believed they were comforting her, Fanny felt obliged to comfort them; this was the case with Maynard’s elderly mother and aunts as well, who had adored him. The widow knew herself closely observed by female acquaintances in Contracoeur, and worried that she was being found wanting in certain particulars: the horror of Death had gradually become obscured by the more immediate anxiety that Fanny was inadequate to the social demands of her position. Fanny Stirling was one of those well-to-do but insecure society women who agonize more about being talked about behind their back than about even illness or death.
Fanny Stirling, née Nederlander, a daughter of the barrel-manufacturing family of Buffalo, New York, was a girl of fifty at the time of her husband’s unexpected death. Her personality was girlish, rather than womanly; her mannerisms—a way of ducking her head, a way of smiling, a way of fluttering her fingers in conversation—were meant to suggest girlhood, and not maturity; for the Stirling men had not admired, in women, forcefulness of manner or any suggestion of a restless, critical or speculative intelligence approaching their own. It had always amused Maynard, and made him love her the more, that she should try repeatedly to grasp the nature of his work, and repeatedly fail—“I swear, Fanny knows less about the law now than she did when we first met,” Maynard had liked to say with a smile. Nor was Fanny quite able to share Maynard’s other interests—in billiards and golf, at which he excelled, and in the collecting of English and Scottish paintings, rare stamps, coins, and old manuscripts (in Latin and Old German primarily) pertaining to the law. As Maynard was large-bodied and assured, with a lawyerly habit of speaking slowly, yet with forceful logic, like a locomotive pulverizing anyone or anything who stood in its way, so Fanny Stirling was high-strung by temperament, both vain and self-effacing. She was very like her good-hearted but nervous mother, who had so dreaded exposing herself to the judgment of society, she’d died rather than acknowledge a malevolent growth in her “female anatomy,” fearing gossip, and, under the anesthetic, the possibility of unclean words issuing from her lips; for all good, decent Christian women feared such exposure. If I am known for what I am, I cannot be loved. God help me!
So, on that May morning, eight days after Maynard’s death, when the downstairs maid hurried to Fanny Stirling with a most peculiar expression on her pert little face, saying that a young woman named Mina Raumlicht was asking to see Mr. Stirling, in fact demanding to see him, knowing nothing apparently of Mr. Stirling’s death, Fanny shut her Bible at once and rose stiffly knowing only that, at all costs, scandal must be avoided.
5.
Here was a mild shock: as Fanny Stirling descended the stairs, her hand gripping the banister to guide her, she saw her son Warren standing in the hall just outside Maynard’s study, staring at the visitor just inside. How does he know of her? So quickly? Fanny felt a stab of maternal panic. When Warren glanced up at her, his expression showed embarrassment, yet excitement. “Who is she, Mother?” he asked in an undertone. Fanny said, frowning, “This is not your concern, Warren. This has nothing to do with you.” Her brother-in-law Tyler approached, exchanged a glance with Fanny—how quickly the two understood each other—and slipped into the room without a word to Warren. “But, Mother—” the boy protested, as Fanny said, with more harshness than she intended, “She is no one we know, or wish to know,” and Warren said, “Then why is she here?—I saw her approach the house, she looks so frightened,” and Fanny said, her voice rising with a threat of hysteria, which never failed to intimidate the men of the family, “Warren, go away. I forbid you, in your late father’s name, to speculate on matters that do not concern you.”
6.
A seamstress’s assistant. Seventeen years of age. Who had come to Contracoeur to work the previous year, and had taken lodgings with an elderly relative of her family, across town in East Contracoeur—“The far side of the Chautauqua & Buffalo tracks.”
Their initial interview lasted well into the afternoon. The three of them shut away in Maynard’s rosewood-panelled study, the shutters partly shut against a too-bright, too-intrusive spring sunshine that hurt Fanny Stirling’s swollen eyes. Within minutes the situation became clear, in its horror, to the adults; the worst part of it being that the naive young girl was no less dangerous to the Stirling household and to Maynard’s unblemished reputation for being, as it so painfully appeared, wholly innocent.
Self-conscious, shrinking, out of her element, as out of her social class, in trying to converse with these imposing adults, Miss Mina Raumlicht seemed incapable of comprehending, at first, that Mr. Stirling had “passed away”—she seemed in fact not to hear, staring, blinking, smiling with a peculiar intensity at Tyler, who was obliged to repeat his words. As Fanny, in a haze of migraine and despair, tried to harden her heart against the intruder, a shy little wren of a country girl for whom, in other circumstances, Fanny would have felt Christian compassion. (For years, Fanny Stirling and certain of her women friends had been active, to a degree, in the founding and funding of the Presbyterian Home for Unwed Mothers in Contracoeur.) Mina Raumlicht had large deep-set bluish-gray eyes, threaded with blood and ringed with fatigue; there was a hectic flush to her cheeks, a symptom of fever—or worse; her small, doll-like features were pinched and sickly. Her hair was a fair silvery brown neatly plaited and worn about her head like a crown. Her cloak was well worn, over-large for her slender figure; made of some cheap velveteen material of a magenta hue so dark as to appear black, neatly hemmed, but beginning to fray. Beneath it, the girl wore a simple dark cotton frock with a square yoke, tight sleeves and a wristfrill that fell despondently to her somewhat raw-looking knuckles. The skirt was full and stiff and rustled unpleasantly, like muffled whispers; the jacket, drooping in the shoulders, tied rather than buttoned across the front. Sensing how ill-dressed she must appear in the eyes of a rich Greenley Square matron, Miss Raumlicht sat hunched in her chair, arms loosely folded across her waist, and fingers tightly clasped. It struck Fanny Stirling’s eye that the girl did not wear gloves; her fingers were without rings, and her nails were painfully short as if bitten. As once I bit my own nails, in terror of the male mystery that surrounds.
/> At last, Mina Raumlicht seemed to comprehend that Mr. Stirling, to whom she’d recently written, and whom she now so daringly, desperately sought, was dead. “But—how could God allow it?” she whispered. “At such a time—?”
With a warning glance at his sister-in-law, Tyler said, in a cooler voice than he might have wished, “I’m afraid, Miss Raumlicht, that God allows many things in His world, and in His time.”
There was a silence. At a near distance, the somber yet surpassingly beautiful bells of St. Mary Magdalen’s Church began to toll the hour. As in a sick, sliding dissolve, as if on the verge of illness, Fanny Stirling was weeping unrestrainedly, and now Mina Raumlicht began to weep. The one haggard with grief and the other, so many years younger, with a child’s gasping sobs, her beautiful eyes spilling with tears that glinted like acid and her hard little knuckles jammed against her mouth.
Tyler moved to comfort the women, with an air of both gallantry and vexation. How quickly a man tires of female weakness, especially female grief for another man! As he rose from his chair, the little seamstress’s assistant seemed to shrink from him, as if fearing a blow; her eyes rolled upward in their sockets, her skin drained deathly white; she moaned, “Oh!—help me!” and fainted, falling heavily to the carpet before either of the Stirlings could prevent her, revealing, to their horrified eyes, the small but unmistakably rounded, swollen belly inside the shapeless clothing.