A Promise Given Read online

  She looked forlornly around the tastefully appointed room in which she now stood. She hadn’t wanted any of this, but what did it really matter? she sighed. One cage was the same as any other. She had lost control of her life long ago, and she was becoming too tired to keep fighting.

  She heard Henrietta laugh again. How could she be this relaxed? She had to admit that Henrietta had adjusted to the life she herself had run from with seemingly perfect ease. From the sound of it— through Henrietta’s own anecdotes about Highbury and all that went on there—she had no problems interacting with servants, dressing in beautiful gowns, and tending to a full social calendar, all the things that had always filled Martha with dread. Henrietta was already practically living at Highbury, and if she was bothered by Antonia Howard or any of the Exleys, for that matter, she never showed it. In private, Martha marveled at her daughter, as if she belonged to someone else. But it had ever felt that way. She had always seemed more Les’s child than her own. Les would have been proud of Henrietta, especially today. He would idiotically have said something about Henrietta taking a step toward restoring the Von Harmons to greatness. But hadn’t he done that by marrying an Exley? she countered with herself bitterly. No, he had never seemed to count that as worth much of anything. But neither did she, she reminded herself.

  Martha forced him from her mind. There was no place for him here today, nor had there ever really been a place for him in her heart, excepting, of course, at the very beginning. After almost six years since his death she still hated him for what he had done to her, taking the coward’s way out and leaving her here with the eight children she had never really wanted in the first place. But she supposed she had been learning to hate him by degrees over their whole married life.

  He had promised her so many things that had never—she realized almost immediately after their hasty marriage—even had a chance to come true. So many times she had pondered how she had ended up the way she had and inevitably always traced it back to that fateful day in the butlers’ pantry, reliving it in her mind over and over again. She had been quite old, nearly twenty-five, but horribly sheltered by her parents, Oldrich and Charity Exley. Les had already made his morning delivery that day but had come back later in the afternoon to find his cap, he had said with a sly grin, that he could swear he had left behind. Cook was in her room having her nap, and there had been no one else around. Martha, who was given to haunting the kitchens and who never got enough of the butcher boy’s smiles, had eagerly let him in the back door to look for the missing cap. She had followed him to the pantry, where he was sure he had dropped it, he said, though Martha didn’t remember him being anywhere near the butler’s pantry that morning. When they arrived back in the tiny, ancient room, he had lost no time in putting his arms around her thick waist and kissing her. She had never been so shocked in her life, but found, to her shame, that she quite liked his attentions. He had continued his kisses until she was breathing rapidly, and then he had pulled her down beside him (on the floor!) without a moment’s interruption in his efforts. Why had she let him? He had seemed gentle at first, even laughing a bit, but then he grew increasingly passionate. Martha grew worried that someone might come in at any moment, but she found it difficult to stop, in truth, she being so starved for affection, for love, and he being so determined to have his way. She panicked, however, when she realized that he had reached below her petticoat now, and she felt his hardness against her leg. She had no idea what was involved in sexual relations, but she was sure this was not what should be happening. Panic overwhelmed her.

  “No! Leslie! We musn’t!” she said, struggling under the weight of him.

  “Come on, Martha!” he panted. “I’m going to burst here! You can’t just stop a man now!”

  “No, Leslie, please!” she wriggled again, trying to get away.

  But he didn’t answer her except for the rough yank of her drawers and his hard painful thrusts, suddenly inside her now, which she felt sure by the force of them that they would split her in two. Desperate, she tried to scream, but he put his mouth on hers, covering it. He finished quickly, then, and rolled off of her as she remained frozen in fear and shock and pain.

  “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” he said, still panting.

  Martha tried to speak but found she couldn’t, and instead quickly wiped a tear that had rolled down her cheek.

  “Hey,” he said, looking over at her as if seeing her for the first time. “You’re kind of pretty, you know that?” he said and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  He stood up then and held out his hand to her to help her up. After a few moments of staring at his hand, her mind a horrible swirl of confusion, she took it finally and allowed herself to be pulled, the first gesture in the long life of pulling that lay ahead of her. Ashamed, she turned away from him and adjusted her under things. She was pretty sure she was bleeding.

  “Found it!” he grinned, pulling a brown, checked cap out of his back pocket. “Wonder how I didn’t notice it before,” he said with another sly grin. He put it on then with an exaggerated flourish, but in so doing, knocked over one of the tea cups lined up along the edge of the shelf. It shattered upon hitting the floor, but Martha barely noticed. She followed Leslie to the door as if in a trance. She wasn’t sure what to think. Perhaps this is the way it was supposed to be. Les certainly didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong. But could this really be the finale that happened in the romance novels she so adored when the hero and heroine disappeared behind a locked door after their blissful wedding? She had read of birds singing and glowing sunbeams and beating hearts, but this … this had been nothing of the sort, this had been painful and messy and bloody. Blood? How could that be?

  Les paused at the door and kissed her quickly. “See you next week, kid,” he had said, as if he had done nothing more than plop the weeks’ worth of meat and sausages on the table, and sauntered out.

  And then she had gotten pregnant and then she had run away. She hadn’t really wanted to, exactly, but she felt she had no other choice. She had been ashamed—not only of being with child, but of being in some strange way in love with Les, despite what he had done, and she hadn’t known which she hated herself more for.

  Martha had tried to think of him sympathetically after he had died, tried to feel sorry, but she just couldn’t. There was too much anger, too much hurt after his suicide. After all that she had given up, he had given up on her. Rarely did she allow herself moments of self-reflection, but when she did, like today, she suspected there was something terribly wrong with her. There must be. Why else would Les have killed himself? For one thing, she knew she should at least have deeper feelings regarding her children, and she secretly feared she was an unnatural mother. She loved them, yes, but she didn’t seem to have the strength to worry much about them. Each day it was a struggle just to get out of bed. She hated to admit it, but moving into this fine house with servants, much as she had fought it, had allowed her more time than ever to sit and not have to do anything in particular. Her days of trying to force herself to do the little bits of washing and mending that trickled in were over now. There was someone to cook and clean now, someone to do her bidding, someone to care for the children. She supposed that Elsie and, to a certain degree, Henrietta, had already done that for her in the past, but now she didn’t need to feel guilty. She wasn’t sure what Elsie did all day now, Mr. Exley Sr. insisting that she quit her job at Dubala’s, though she suspected she still did some work for the pining Mr. Dubala on the side. The boys were all at St. Sylvester’s, and Mrs. Kuntz was of course in charge of Doris and Donny, taking them out most days or entertaining them in the nursery. How had they all managed before to live in the little apartment on Armitage with just its few tiny rooms?

  And Martha knew she slept too much. She was allowed to sleep as long as she wanted now. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do anything. Nothing excited or motivated her, but she had been that way for so long,
she didn’t remember what it felt like to be otherwise. She knew she should have more patience now, now that they didn’t have to scrimp and save, now that the twins didn’t go hungry at night, now that they all seemed taken care of, but she found she was still just as short, just as cross with all of them. She knew she was being unreasonable at times, overly sensitive and constantly irritated, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Elsie, she knew, took the brunt of her moods, quietly accepting her, which Henrietta rarely did, instead always wanting to challenge and criticize her, it seemed, always ready for a fight.

  She and Henrietta had locked horns since Henrietta was a little girl, but after Les’s suicide, she had had to rely on Henrietta almost entirely, and now it had come to this. This awful, horrible wedding that was sucking her back to a place she had run from—or had she been expelled? She dreaded going today, to have all the eyes upon her, watching her, saying that she deserved what she had got—but she knew she had no choice, and it threw her into a state of near panic.

  She picked up the morning’s newspaper sitting on the otherwise tidy side table and began fanning herself. She had broken out in a sweat again, her stomach clenched in terror at the thought of today’s events. “Elsie!” she tried to call out loud enough for her to hear. “Elsie! Bring me those pills!” she called louder. She could always rely on Elsie, much more so than Henrietta. She had been having these attacks more and more, especially after the stress of moving, and Mrs. Schmidt had suggested calling one Dr. Lawson, who seemed to have a special knowledge for these types of “women’s troubles.” Dr. Lawson had been called in just last week and had given Martha something to take for her nerves. They seemed to help for a short time, but they wore off quickly.

  Elsie appeared, then, pill bottle in hand, dressed in the light blue bridesmaid dress that Henrietta had chosen but which Elsie had insisted on altering herself. Despite her being stockier than Henrietta, painfully resembling herself, Martha thought she looked really quite beautiful. Why hadn’t she thought of herself as beautiful when she had been Elsie’s age? But she already knew the answer. It was her mother, Charity—a more ironic name for a woman there had never been—who had first taught her, perhaps unconsciously, to think so little of herself. The little time she had spent in her mother’s presence had always been filled with corrections and disparaging comments. “Martha, sit up straight!” or “Martha, stop scowling: no man wants to wake up to a sour face!” or “Martha … girlish figure!” whenever she asked for seconds. Martha knew she was a mortifying disappointment to her mother—too big, too ugly, too clumsy, too shy, too introverted—but Charity’s greatest sin, in Martha’s eyes, was that she had let Martha know this, to feel it deeply, every day of her life.

  Her mother had eventually despaired of her and had even sent her to a Swiss finishing school to improve upon her own obviously inadequate efforts, not to mention those of a long string of governesses, but it hadn’t worked. Martha had hated it there and cried herself to sleep every night. But it had taught her one valuable lesson—that she could live without them.

  “Ma, are you okay?” Elsie was asking now, handing her a glass of water and holding out a pill in the palm of her hand. Again Elsie worried about how she was going to carry this off. As Henrietta’s maid of honor, she would of course spend the service on the altar with her and would have to sit next to Henrietta at the head table at the dinner. She would have to entrust Eddie with the pills. He could keep them in his suit pocket.

  Selfishly she wanted to enjoy herself today and was torn between these base feelings and concern for poor Ma. She glanced at the clock on the mantel. The cars being sent from Highbury would be here soon to take them to the church, where she would help Henrietta to slip into her dress. It had been decided that it would be easier for Henrietta to dress in the bride’s sanctuary in the back of Sacred Heart rather than so far away in Palmer Square, not having to be concerned, then, about dirtying it on the ride up to Winnetka. Elsie knew she couldn’t rush Ma, and yet, they would have to hurry.

  Stan was to meet her at the church and had agreed to ride up with the Hennesseys. She thrilled to think what his reaction might be to her beautiful new dress. She was looking forward to seeing him, as he had not been around as much lately. He had been predictably shocked when she had told him she was moving to Palmer Square, but not as happy as she had thought he would be.

  “Gee whiz, Elsie, that’s a bit far for a man to travel, especially to a neighborhood of swells. I’ll have to dress up just to come see you!” he had complained.

  “It’s hardly far, Stanley. Just a few extra blocks, and, anyway, we’ve often gone walking together in Palmer Park,” she had said encouragingly. “It’s not just for swells. You know that.”

  “But now instead of us looking up at all the fancy houses, wondering what it would be like to live in one, now you actually do. Doesn’t seem right somehow.”

  “Anyone would think, Stanley,” she said in a chastising tone, “that you are begrudging me our good fortune.”

  “It’s not that, Elsie, it’s just that, well, I can’t keep up with this! I can’t give a girl this kind of life.”

  Elsie had laughed then. “Oh, Stanley! Of course I don’t expect this! I just … I just want to be with someone I … care for very much,” she had said with a hint of red on her cheeks.

  Stan’s feathers were not to be so easily soothed, however, and he was not as steady a fixture at their new abode as he had been at the shabby apartment on Armitage. Elsie felt his absence keenly, as did Ma, oddly, who had become rather fond of having Stanley about, especially with poor Eugene gone. When Elsie had finally worked up the courage to ask Stan about it, he had told her he had gotten a promotion from the warehouse onto the line at the electrics and was working extra shifts.

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, Elsie,” he had said with determined disgruntlement, and Elsie had smiled to herself at what was his obvious attempt to earn more money for what she believed would be their new life together, whenever that would be.

  At least she hoped it would be their new life together, having convinced herself that Stanley was indeed over his silly crush on Henrietta. After all, Henrietta was marrying Clive Howard today! And if a doubt still occasionally nagged at the corner of Elsie’s mind regarding Stan’s first choice, she pushed it away as quickly as she could and would distract herself with something useful, such as embroidering for her hope chest. Henrietta had never put much stock in a hope chest, but Elsie clung to hers and was ever adding to it, perhaps feeling more in need of hope regarding marriage than Henrietta would ever be.

  Over the years, Elsie had accordingly completed a whole tablecloth and napkins and was now steadily working on a “his and her” set of pillowcases, with a male and female robin on the edge of each, respectively, set among a perfect nest of twining flowers. Even Henrietta had complimented them when she had at last come home to prepare for the wedding, though Henrietta had teased her about who was to be the hopeful recipient of the hope chest and reminded her that a certain Lt. Harrison Barnes-Smith would be in attendance at the wedding and that his RSVP had not listed a companion.

  Elsie had blushed to the roots of her hair at Henrietta’s intimation. She should never have confided in Henrietta, and, yet, how could she not? She had no one else. She had told Henrietta that she had, as it happened, run into none other than Lt. Harrison Barnes-Smith in Palmer Park—of all places—several times now over the summer. Elsie had related how she had gotten into the habit of taking Donny and Doris there in the afternoons to give poor Mrs. Kuntz a rest, who, in Elsie’s opinion, anyway, was perhaps a trifle too plump to be employed as a nanny, as the position required much running after children, or at least the Von Harmon children, at any rate. As a result, Doris and Donny had become quite fond of watching the bicyclists that frequented the park’s perfectly oval track, and she herself had very little else to do anyway.

  Elsie had been surprised, then, on one particular afternoon as she strolled a
mong the cluster of shrub roses planted near the north end, when she chanced to see Lieutenant Barnes-Smith—at least she thought it was him—riding with one of the clubs just coming around the corner. Before she had a chance to think, she had waved to him, which she later decided was probably unladylike. At the sight of her waving, a look of puzzlement had crossed the lieutenant’s face before he seemed to recall who she was. He had come over directly, then, his companions reluctantly dismounting to wait.

  “Miss Von Harmon?” he asked as he approached. “I thought it was you! Do you remember me? I think we shared a dance or two at your sister’s engagement party. Lt. Barnes-Smith, at your service,” he said, bowing slightly in exaggerated politeness.

  “Yes,” Elsie had blushed. “Of course I remember you.” She gazed at him now, and he seemed even more handsome than when she had met him at the party. He had thick black hair and dark brown eyes and a slight dimple in his chin. She knew she should say something more, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what. Instead, she furtively looked over at Doris and Donny, who were climbing a fallen tree some distance away.

  “Yours?” he said, eyeing Doris and Donny with a smile.

  “Oh, no, they’re my brother and sister … I … Oh! You were teasing, weren’t you?” she said, blushing now when she saw the amusement in his eyes.

  “I was, yes, but how cruel of me. Forgive me,” he said, laughing a bit.

  Elsie was silent for what seemed like ages and could not help but feel it was ungentlemanly of him to simply stare at her, leaving her awkwardly dangling for conversation. She might have made an allowance if she suspected he were shy, but he seemed quite the opposite—quite outgoing and, well … charming.

  “Did you … did you enjoy the party?” she finally managed.