Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (23 page)

“He is out of patience,” I guessed. I opened the envelope even before removing my hat and coat. “He is leaving Boston tomorrow to visit relatives, and wishes the shirts in the morning. If not, he cannot receive them, nor make payment for them, until February. Oh, my.” Still in my damp coat and wet boots, I trudged in a daze to Auntie Bond’s parlor and sat heavily in my favorite chair. There was the sewing basket next to me. There were the finished shirts (who knew where the missing finished one had gone?), and there were the others still waiting to be done. And next to that basket, the pieces for the ordered dozen spring shirts for the reverend, not even begun.

The spring order could and would wait. The winter order
could not, for with that payment I had planned to purchase the Faber pencils for Abby and the writing paper for Father and the warm coat for Marmee, and the music portfolio for Lizzie—and with that portfolio a chance in the drawing to work with Signor Massimo himself.

“Don’t worry, Louy,” said Lizzie, coming and sitting on the chair next to me. “We’ll do it together.”

“All in one day? Not even two people can do it, not if they are to be done well enough to ask payment for them,” I said morosely, for the Slough of Despond that had been making my feet feel heavy and my spirits low sank me completely at that moment. I had failed.

Mrs. Percy’s murderer was nowhere closer to apprehension than he had been the day of the murder. My logic and thinking had carried me in circles, and all I had to show for it were some pages of a very strange and morose story waiting on my attic desk, a story, moreover, that no sane editor would ever want to publish. Worse, I had failed to earn the income that had been the main purpose for living apart from my beloved family for these many months, and because I had not completed the work I could not give the Christmas presents I wished, with all my heart, to present to that beloved family.

The situation looked dark, indeed.

Why, then, was Lizzie beaming at me in that radiant fashion?

“Oh, you look so awful,” she teased. “Like that very hot summer day you wanted to swim in Walden Pond but you had eaten four green apples and felt ill, so Marmee wouldn’t let you. Do you remember?”

“I do remember,” I said, and smiled despite the day because Lizzie’s smile was impossible to ignore. “What amazes me is that you remember. You were so little then. The prettiest child.” I touched her soft curls. Sweet, gentle, shy Lizzie. She was too good for this world. “But what am I to do, Lizzie? Oh, I had such plans for the money I was to earn!”

Reader, if you do not have one, I recommend you quickly acquire a little sister, for they are the most astonishing of creatures. My little sister’s smile grew broader, and her eyes glistened with joy.

“I meant it as a surprise, but it had to come out sooner or later, and now seems the right time,” said she, kneeling next to the sewing basket. “Did you think nothing strange about these shirts, Louy? I know you are preoccupied, but still your quick mind should have noticed.”

“The fabric is lighter than it should be for winter shirts,” I said, bemused.

“That,” said Lizzie with a great deep breath of pride, “is because you have been sewing the spring shirts. I changed the baskets, and I myself have been sewing the winter shirts, so they might be done sooner. I know you wanted the money for Christmas, and since I cannot earn”—Lizzie was too fragile, too precious, for employment—”I thought to help you earn. And so, dear Louy, there is but one shirt to finish, and even that shirt needs only the buttonholes. There! I can finish the buttonholes before dinner, and we can have the shirts sent to the reverend this evening. Tomorrow morning you will do your Christmas shopping!”

She sat back on her heels and folded her arms over her chest.

“Oh, you darling!” I exclaimed, kneeling beside her and embracing her. “You have been earning the money for your own present!”

“No,” said she, growing serious. “The gift I most desire I already have. And money cannot purchase a loving mother and father, and brood of sisters. You may whistle if you want, Louy.”

I did not whistle. I wiped away a tear of joy and gratitude instead.

“Well, this would be a fine time for a glass of warm eggnog,” said Auntie Bond, who had been watching and listening from the doorway.

“Come here, you good woman,” I said, and she did, and the three of us embraced and performed an impromptu jig before the hearth in anticipation of the happy season to come.

And so that evening befell just as Lizzie predicted; Auntie Bond and I made a supper for us as Lizzie finished the buttonholes. Before we sat down to our soup and vegetables and bread and cheese, Auntie Bond sent the lad from next door to deliver the finished shirts to Reverend Ezra Gannett, and packed in with the shirts, well wrapped, was one of her own baked fruitcakes to brighten his season. One hour later, as we were drinking another glass of eggnog before the hearth and reading aloud to each other from Dickens’s
Bleak House,
the lad returned with a fat envelope and my—our—payment. Half of it went to Lizzie, who was delighted with the feel of earned coins in her palm, and I still had enough left to realize my plans.

A fine job, Miss Alcott, fine indeed!
the reverend wrote in a note included with the payment.

I hastily wrote a reply to his note:
I am pleased you are pleased, sir. Please know, though, that I cannot take credit, since much—most—of the stitching was accomplished by my sister Elizabeth, and she is, as you have noted, a fine seamstress. Merry Christmas, sir!

Tomorrow, I thought, valuing that envelope more than wealth should be valued, I know. Tomorrow the shopkeepers shall be wrapping presents for the Alcott family.

I slept deeply that night, without a further thought for Mrs. Percy or Suzie Dear or Phineas Barnum, my vexed spirits giving themselves over to the joy of the season to come, to thoughts of trimming the Christmas tree and eating a roasted turkey with cranberries. But when I awoke on the morrow, two instant thoughts jarred me into the coming day: I would have to put aside money for a betrothal gift for Sylvia, I supposed, and I must visit the old Beacon Hill cemetery.

Neither thought was particularly pleasant. Sylvia lived in a headlong manner and often found herself in deep trouble because of her inability to look before leaping. As for visiting a cemetery to spend hours perusing tombstones—who would look forward to such a pastime?

Grimacing and muttering a little, I dressed in my plain brown workaday dress and tried to tame my willful hair into a tidy snood. Sparks flew about my face in the dim morning light as I sat before the dressing table mirror and gave my rebellious mane fifty strokes with the brush. My face looked back at me, pale and serious, the eyes darker and larger than usual. The goodwill of the evening before returned only when
I remembered that that morning I was to go make the final payment on Lizzie’s music portfolio.

A knot of worry so filled my stomach, though, that I couldn’t eat the bread and jam and bacon laid out for breakfast. Was the portfolio still waiting for me at Mr. Crowell’s Music Store, or had I failed Lizzie?

T
REMONT
S
TREET WAS
thick with shoppers bustling on the walks and in the streets, a busy world filled with people wishing one another season’s greetings and joy in the New Year to come as snow fell to remind us of winter’s delight. Bakers’ windows were filled with frosted fruitcakes, and cobblers displayed red silk dancing slippers for the balls and parties of the New Year; stationery windows boasted that new delight of the season, cards, already printed with best wishes for a happy holiday.

I headed directly for Mr. Crowell’s Music Store. My heart was thudding painfully in my chest as I approached his window. But there, to my joy, was the last portfolio, still resting on its wooden stand, waiting for me!

Mr. Crowell beamed at me when I entered, holding up my purse to indicate I was there with coin in hand to finish payment.

“I knew you’d do it,” he said, his smile so broad it filled
the bottom half of his face and set his side whiskers to twitching like a cat’s. “A woman was in here yesterday looking at this, and I might have mentioned to her that the printing on this last set was not as good as the first. I might have mentioned that to discourage her, you know, though it’s not true and I hope I’ll be forgiven the exaggeration, but I did feel that Miss Elizabeth would sure enjoy receiving this for Christmas.”

I was tempted to give Mr. Crowell a hug, but forbore to retain a semblance of dignity, though I was all but dancing with joy. “She will enjoy it, I am sure, Mr. Crowell,” I agreed.

Carefully he removed the heavy portfolio from its place in the window, rested it on a piece of brown paper on the counter, and ran his hand over the red leather cover. The gold embossed lettering gleamed; the new leather gave off that glorious bookbinder’s scent that promises everything, if you will but open to a page. Reverently Mr. Crowell opened the folio at random, and we beheld the strange cryptic art of the composer, those black staffs and dots climbing up and down the five-lined arbor of the musical score. “Beautiful.” Mr. Crowell sighed, no doubt playing Liszt’s music in his head and hearing the notes that were, for me, only black marks on an ivory page.

Almost with regret for his own loss, he carefully closed the heavy book, wrapped it in brown paper, and then gave it a second wrapping of a gay red-and-white-striped paper.

“The drawing for the lottery, for the lessons with Signor Massimo, will be this afternoon at three o’clock. Will you be here, Miss Alcott?” he asked.

Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away!

“There will be punch and cookies,” he said. “Mrs. Crowell insisted. Punch! In my store! Ay!” He pretended to hit himself in the head, but his pleasure was apparent in the wide grin beneath the gray-flecked mustache. “So come for punch and cookies, and let us see if little Elizabeth Alcott is to study with Signor Massimo!”

Feeling light as air, as happy as the dancing snowflakes, I finished my errands of the morning.

“A fad,” said Mr. Giles of Giles Stationery, when I paused before his counter and examined the boxes of cards he had lined up next to the register. “Christmas cards won’t last. People won’t be content with sending a message someone else wrote for them.” His white shirtsleeves were pushed up with black bands, displaying his thick wrists and the printer’s ink staining his fingers, for in his back room Mr. Giles also had a small press with which he printed invitations to weddings and parties.

“They are a nice thought,” I said, examining a box of cards and wondering if I might have enough money left over to purchase one so that I might send colorful greetings to my friends in Walpole and Concord.

“Some of Mr. Alcott’s finest?” Mr. Giles asked, opening a drawer and, after putting on clean white gloves, taking out a ream of good, heavy writing paper.

“Two reams, please,” I said. “Wrapped for Christmas, and sent to his address in Walpole. And this box of pencils for Abby, also to be sent to Walpole.” I had selected the heaviest box that Faber made, filled with dozens of drawing pencils in every color of the rainbow, a true treasure trove for an artist.

“Excellent.” Mr. Giles smiled and almost reached over to
pat my head—that was how long he had supplied Father’s writing paper—and then thought better of it, since it was years since I had been a child. The doorbell jangled, and a brace of other customers entered, exclaiming over the display of Christmas cards.

At Mrs. Frank’s Dress Shop I looked at Marmee’s new coat one last time, felt its softness against my cheek, checked its weight by balancing a sleeve in my palm, then had it wrapped in white paper, boxed, and made ready for shipment to Walpole.

“It will be there in plenty of time for Christmas,” assured Mrs. Frank. “And won’t Mrs. Alcott look grand in it! She’ll be warm, too. That coat is made of good, heavy wool, New England wool, none of that fancy import fabric.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Frank,” I said, giving her a hearty handshake. The spirit of Christmas had entered my heart. Marmee and Father and my other sisters wouldn’t be with me in Boston, but just the same they were there with me. Always. Even now, kind reader. At the Boston Emporium I made the final payment on Anna’s blue lace shawl, and arranged for that to be shipped to Syracuse. Auntie Bond’s new white house cap embroidered with blue forget-me-nots I carried away with me, to put under the tree next week.

The world had grown softer, a little easier, friendlier, once I knew those gifts were on their way to Walpole, so it was with great reluctance that I met Sylvia for tea later that afternoon at our favorite tea shop, which, by coincidence, was just a few blocks away from the old Beacon Hill cemetery. The afternoon would not be as pleasant as the morning had been.

“Signor Massimo? I’ve heard of him. A tyrant of a teacher.
But a genius. Oh, I do hope Lizzie wins,” said Sylvia. The tea shop was busy, and the clatter of china, the ringing of bells, the exclamations of friends and relatives meeting and greeting one another filled the small shop.

“I know only his reputation,” I replied somewhat loudly, so that I might be heard over the bustle. “But if he is a tyrant, and Lizzie wins the lottery, she will vanquish him and make him as gentle as a house cat. She has such power to win people over. And you, Sylvia, have you conquered our young Constable Cobban?”

My closest friend in all the world raised her eyebrows, pursed her mouth, and studied the ceiling for a moment. “I truly don’t know,” she said finally. “He is a very stubborn and somewhat eccentric personality.”

“Then you two have much in common. Another sesame bun?” I moved the plate closer to her.

“He is coming to dinner after the New Year. It will be a very small dinner, only he and I and Mother and you and Lizzie.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Don’t subject me to this. Your mother meeting as a possible son-in-law an officer of the law who wears plaid suits? I don’t think I could, Sylvia. I am staunch, but even I have limits,” I teased.