All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred forty)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

 

Chapter Nine

City Ways

 

(part two hundred forty)

 

 

 

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The Chicagoans were at Indianapolis, waiting; they had left Cookesville on the afternoon of finishing their work. Élucide had said goodbye to her father, half wishing he would say, “Ride home with me and stay for supper.”

But to Monaghan’s request: “She can judge for herself.”

And to, by all means keep at your daughter’s side, sir, if… “No, I can’t be leaving fifty things undone.”

Which left the question of whether—still regarding her parents’ feelings, if they were angry and would not regard hers—to roust up a traveling companion made any difference. She would be riding in company with a policeman and a lawyer. And with Weem, in shadow.

She stopped, going home, at the Vanguard offices, sent a boy to the plant to bring back Samuel, told Samuel to let Pearletta know Bee was needed at Miss Gremot’s.

Then she rang the bell at Metz’s.

 

 

Talk was circumspect, Monaghan reading, laying aside as he finished, so that Phelan, too, might read. Phelan napped. Libby beaded a velvet square.

Élucide was reading Hardy. She was armed with an opinion, how she could not like the girl who put herself to feckless use amid anyone and everyone’s business, and whose passivity had killed the little bird…

But on The Mayor of Casterbridge, no one remarked. Monaghan’s eye when caught had letters, not literature, in it.

“Do they match?” she asked him. “Mine, to the ones you’ve seen?”

“Ah. Together, they supply a certain trend. Now, for my curiosity, Mr. Ebrach.”

“Judge for yourself.”

“Which I never do in haste. I am open to points of view. I wonder if the having of such a person in the town might serve as encouragement…”

“You wonder, having met my father, why I get away with so much.”

He laughed. “You have a brother. He makes his living as a public speaker.”

Élucide decided this, as a question, circular. Walter was a public speaker, and he made his living at it. She looked at Monaghan.

“Travels with an educated darkie.”

She threw a conspicuous glance at her seatmate. Libby stitched on.

“My brother speaks on the labor question, and Isa is his helper.”

“Talks to the Pullman porters.”

“Well, the union doesn’t want them to obstruct, to take over the work if a strike is called.”

Monaghan picked up the letter from his lap. Down the aisle a man bumped, his girth to each seatback. Monaghan peered, with amusement in his eye, over his shoulder. “Your brother brought a Mr. Debs to your house.”

“Not as a guest. They needed to have a conversation.”

“Your father owns stock in a railroad company.”

“That’s true.”

And if the stock held good, Walter would inherit? But of Walter, Monaghan had no more to say.

 

 

252

 

 

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred forty-one)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2025, Stephanie Foster)