Confessions to Mr. Roosevelt Read online

  Ellen took this down, surprised at the note of strong conviction in the woman’s tone.

  “I see you writing this down in those squiggles,” Agatha continued, her voice lighter now. “I saw my dear friend Ivy Hamilton this morning after you left her house. She and her daughter-in-law picked me up to go to the church. I’ve never been much at sewing, but I help separate the items into sizes and so forth at the clothing bank.”

  She gave a little sigh. “I used to drive everywhere, but then I had that unfortunate accident. I tried to tell my son it really wasn’t my fault the automobile ended up on the front steps of the Methodist Church. Nobody was hurt, but he got rid of my beautiful Oldsmobile anyway.”

  The image of an elegant Mrs. Bright bouncing her car onto the church steps made Ellen smile as she struggled to bring both herself and Mrs. Bright back to the reason for her visit. “And you talked to Mrs. Hamilton about her interview?”

  The woman nodded. “She said you won’t put anything down if I ask you to leave it out.” She cocked her head to one side as a question.

  “That’s right.” Ellen nodded. “I don’t think Mrs. Hewitt or Mrs. Fletcher in Topeka will mind as long as what we do write down is interesting and useful.”

  “What about Mr. Roosevelt?” Ellen detected a mischievous gleam in the woman’s eyes. “You know, some of these old pioneers think the president himself is going to read what they have to say.”

  Ellen smiled and nodded. “So I’ve heard, but I would be very surprised if that happened. I think the president has other things on his mind.” She paused. “Now, Mrs. Bright, are you ready for me to write or just listen?”

  “Call me Miss Agatha, if you don’t mind. Most everybody in town does.”

  The woman seemed to relax but remained silent for a moment, fingering the cane. Ellen’s instinct was to remain quiet. Some people, she knew, needed time to gather their thoughts. Peppering them with questions only pushed them away.

  Agatha took a deep breath and looked straight into Ellen’s eyes. “One of these days, I’m going to be gone. Ivy, too. When that happens, no living person will know the story of who I was before I became Mrs. Thomas Bright. My children don’t know, and certainly not my grandchildren. I hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to tell you, a stranger, but since my talk with Ivy at the church, I’ve been thinking I would like someone to know about me after I pass on. But there is a great deal I don’t want written down or ever repeated.”

  Ellen felt the seriousness of the moment. She had the odd feeling of suddenly stepping into a confessional, but it wasn’t an entirely unknown situation. She’d once been assigned the job of writing about a much-beloved spinster teacher, never imagining that during what began as a rather boring interview, the woman would suddenly reveal that she had been married for twenty years to the man who posed as her mother’s hired hand.

  Ellen never told anyone the teacher’s secret. Nor would she breathe a word of Miss Agatha’s. She said just that, adding that she felt it was an honor for the woman to confide in her.

  Agatha nodded and leaned back, satisfied. “Well, this is the listening part, and maybe you’ll understand more as I explain. People have a particular picture of who I am. I’m a member of the upstanding, comfortably-fixed Bright family, and I’ve worked most of my life to be that person. But when I first came to Opal’s Grove as a bride, there were some nasty rumors about my background. These were spread about by a certain someone who is still alive and still as meanspirited. One breath in this interview of my humble beginnings—and believe me, they were—might start this person off again.”

  Ellen stopped herself from jumping in and asking who this was and why he or she would do such a thing. Better to let Miss Agatha tell things her own way. Questions could come later.

  “I couldn’t abide that, and I don’t wish to have my family embarrassed by whispers and innuendo. My daughter is married to a prominent man who advises the governor, and Tom Junior runs the bank that was started by his grandfather and carried on by my husband. People think highly of my son, because when other banks failed, he kept this one going. I won’t have his reputation tarnished.”

  Ellen put aside the notebook and sat back. “Whatever you tell me goes no further than this room. I promise.”

  Agatha nodded and took a deep breath and began to talk about her parents. “They lived in a mining village in Wales. Dad worked the coal mines. Ma was a scullery maid in the mine owner’s fine house. But Dad got into trouble. Had a fight with the owner’s son and left him so bloody that Dad’s family and friends pooled their money to get Dad safely away from the man’s wrath and, quite possibly, jail. But he wouldn’t leave without Ma. He got a minister to say words of marriage over them and then beat a hasty path to the closest port for passage to America.

  “That was two or three years after gold was discovered in California, and Dad became obsessed with joining in the rush to find his pot of gold.” Agatha shrugged. “My parents were closemouthed about so many things. I never knew how they made their way to California, where I was born. My three brothers, too.” Agatha shifted her gaze toward the front window.

  “From the time I was five or six, I had this idea I was born into the wrong family. We moved from one mining town to another, one claim to the next. Then Dad traded California for Colorado. An image that will never leave me is a little cottage I spied as we traveled through a mountain town. It wasn’t a big house, but there were lace curtains in the windows and hollyhocks by the front door. I wanted to be the little girl living in that house.”

  Agatha sighed. “It’s a mystery to me how my brothers and I survived our childhoods. When we were sick, we were dosed with whatever homemade remedy came to mind. If things seemed really dire, Dad found someone who claimed to have doctoring skills. Otherwise, my parents were fairly indifferent toward us. They seemed to live for each other in their own world. I could swear Ma sometimes looked at her children with surprise, like she was wondering what these little urchins were doing in her kitchen. So, when we weren’t doing chores, my brothers and I explored caves, climbed trees and rocks, and played in abandoned shacks. If there was a school going, we might attend, but it was hit and miss.

  “I liked the freedom of doing whatever came to mind, but even a little kid knows when things are out of kilter. I had this yearning to learn from books and to find out how people lived in those nice houses I sometimes saw. Help wouldn’t come from Dad or Ma. I was eight years old when I decided I had to do it myself. We were in California when this revelation came to me, and I asked the wife of a Methodist minister in the camp if she could teach me to read. This went on from place to place. Someone else began my lessons in writing. Another showed me how to do simple sums. A gambler taught me a smattering of French while teaching me the finer points of blackjack and poker.” The amusement returned to her voice. “I never had the opportunity to display my card-playing skills, but the French was useful, if for nothing else than impressing Thomas’s parents.

  “In another camp, two bachelor miners loaned me books, explaining the words I didn’t understand. Sometimes, they read to me. Shakespeare. Dickens. I loved Dickens. In a mining town—by this time we were in Colorado—I had my first real lessons in manners and the social graces.” Agatha paused for a long moment. “My teachers were two whores.”

  Agatha stopped and eyed Ellen. “Does that shock you?”

  Ellen fought to show no reaction. She wanted Mrs. Bright to continue, no matter what. “I would say surprised.” It was the mildest word Ellen could think of when, in fact, she was reeling between stunned and astonished.

  Agatha continued, leaving Ellen to feel she’d passed some sort of test.

  “I was rather vague on the particulars of what these women did with their male visitors. In fact, I hadn’t given them much thought. They were as common in mining districts as prospectors going bust. Then, a woman bent on reform came to our shack, wanting Ma to sign a petition to rid the town of these ‘soiled doves.’ Ma p
ulled her hands out of the washtub where she’d been scrubbing Dad’s overalls and gave the woman a long look before she refused. She wasn’t going to bring more trouble to those women, she said. At least a few had once been genteel ladies. Under other circumstances some of them would be having tea with this busybody woman. That’s what Ma called her, a ‘busybody.’ ”

  Agatha chuckled. “Ma had her faults, but I admired her for standing up to that do-gooder. Now, this gave me an idea. If some of those women had once been genteel, they would surely know good manners, and I desperately wanted to learn. In that town, there were six houses with ladies. I went to the backdoor of four of them before I found two women willing to teach me some social graces. One, who called herself Lizzie, claimed to have been a maid in a fine house before her employer ruined her. The other, known as Billy Belle, was the widow of a Union soldier. At first they laughed at me. And who could blame them? I was a scrawny ragamuffin.

  “The woman that ran the bawdy house came charging into the kitchen swinging a broom and cursing like the devil to chase me away. Well, that didn’t work. The woman was too fat to swing very far. And the cursing didn’t shock me. You couldn’t be in a mining camp and not hear the worst kind of language. Lizzie and Billy Belle had practically collapsed from laughter by then, but they finally managed to get themselves under control. And to my surprise, they talked the fat lady into letting me visit. Until we moved on to another camp, I went two or three times a week.

  “They fussed over me, treating me like a pet. Billy Belle often brushed out my hair. It was as black as the coal Pa mined in Wales, and it was beautiful when it was done up right. Lizzie brought out a fringed shawl for me to wear so I felt dressed up for a tea party. I practiced walking like a lady from the kitchen door to the table. I learned to sit with my back straight and knees together. They taught me to daintily drink from a china teacup and to take small bites from butter-smeared slices of bread we pretended were little cakes and sandwiches. Over the years, I’ve thought fondly about those women.”

  Agatha sat back, fanning her face with a lace-edged handkerchief. “I think I would like some lemonade.” She reached for the bell on a small side table.

  When Thelma’s sister arrived, Agatha briefly introduced Martha. Ellen guessed she was a good ten years older than Thelma, but Ellen saw a sisterly resemblance in their smiles.

  After Martha returned and left two sweating glasses of lemonade, Ellen again reassured Miss Agatha that none of what she had said would be put on paper. “I understand your reasons for not making this public, but I think it’s inspirational. Look at all the people today who are trying to improve themselves and get ahead. You’re proof it can be done.”

  “Pooh.” Agatha drank deeply from her glass. “Lots of people helped along the way, but things changed for me because the family’s fortunes improved. By the time I met Thomas Bright, we were a respectable family, living in a modest but nice house with lace curtains. I was a long ways from being little Aggie from the mining camps.” She placed her half-empty glass on a side table.

  Ellen took another sip of lemonade before setting her glass aside. Sensing the time had come for Miss Agatha’s official story, she sat ready to take it down. When Miss Agatha didn’t object, she began to write.

  “Dad made his strike in 1866. None of us could believe it. Oh, he’d had some success over the years, but this one was different. And Dad was no fool. The prospector’s life was wearing him down. Ma, too. He took the money and moved us to Denver, where he set up a business. My brothers worked with Dad, freighting supplies to the mines that no train could reach and working in the store he opened to sell mining equipment.

  “It was in Denver I met Thomas. He was there on business for his father’s bank, looking for investments or some such thing.” Agatha’s mouth formed a beautiful smile as she remembered, and, once again, Ellen caught a glimpse of the beauty the woman had been in her younger days.

  “My, he was handsome! He stood over six feet; the top of my head barely reached his shoulder. He had a wonderful sense of humor, but only the people who knew him well ever saw that side of him. To the outside world, he was a serious banker, because that’s what people expect. That’s what they trust. Thomas Bright only did one impulsive thing in his entire life, and that was marry me.”

  Ellen’s hand wavered over the notebook. She expected Agatha to ask to strike that last part because it was too personal. In the few seconds it took to realize that wasn’t going to happen, Ellen asked how Agatha met her future husband.

  The woman’s laugh was low. “I bumped into him. Or maybe it was him running into me. My father had bought a piano for our front parlor, thinking this was the kind of thing a successful businessman would have in his home. No one was actually expected to play the thing, but I wanted to improve myself and took up music lessons. I had a terrible singing voice, but it turned out I had some aptitude for the piano. On the afternoon I met Thomas, I was walking home from a lesson with Mrs. Arbantrout, whose countenance and exacting ways terrified students. I was no different, but I was determined to please her. So, there I was, walking along and replaying in my head the day’s lesson when Thomas and I collided. Sheet music went flying, and I was saved from a hard fall by Thomas grabbing my waist. He insisted on seeing me home, and at the doorstep asked if he might call that evening to assure himself I was unhurt.

  “He came every night for the next two weeks. At the end of that time, he asked Pa for permission to marry me. There was no objection, and for the first time I could remember, my folks made an effort to notice me. Pa gave me a small, but quite adequate, dowry. Ma threw herself into planning the wedding dinner and ordering flowers for my bouquet. Less than two weeks after Thomas proposed, we married on a bright April afternoon in 1869. I was eighteen. He was twenty-two. The ceremony took place at home in the parlor. A Methodist minister conducted the ceremony. My dress was pearl gray with a gray-and-white-striped underskirt. There was lace at the collar and at the wrists.”

  Agatha smiled at the memory. “We were a handsome couple, even if I do say so myself. And the best part was we truly loved each other, even though we had known each other for such a short time. Now, you’re wondering if he knew about the way I’d grown up.”

  Ellen nodded, putting down her pencil. Without being told, she knew this was not for public consumption.

  “I became so fond of him so quickly that at first I was afraid I’d never see him again if he knew. He obviously came from such a different background. But I couldn’t deceive him, so I mustered up my courage and told him about tramping from camp to camp, how wild we children were, and finding teachers in the most improbable places. I even told him about Lizzy and Billy Belle.”

  Agatha tilted back her head and chuckled. “My, you should have seen the look on his face when I mentioned that. Then he did the most remarkable thing. His face broke into a smile that got wider until he actually shook with laughter. Then, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. After he pulled away and I was trying to breathe again, he said he was even more in love with me than he had imagined. He was like you, saying he admired my spirit.

  “We never spoke again of my childhood. Thomas gave his parents a brief sketch of my father as a prospector who struck it rich and then settled in Denver as an honest and prosperous businessman. In the long run, I guess it didn’t matter all that much what Dad did for a living. He died of pneumonia two years after my marriage. Ma followed him four months later. The doctor couldn’t identify the cause, but I knew. She couldn’t imagine living without Dad and just up and died.”

  Agatha pointed to Ellen’s notebook and nodded. “When Thomas brought me to Kansas, I was anxious about his parents. After all, the first they knew of their son’s marriage was the telegram he sent from Denver. But they were wonderful to me. Even Thomas’s sister Julia, who, he warned, was too wrapped up in her books to be social, was very kind. When she decided to attend a women’s college in the East, I truly missed her company. All in all, I co
nsidered myself a very lucky bride. I adored my husband, and I had a new family that welcomed me as a daughter. We lived with Thomas’s family while this house was being built for us and got along beautifully.”

  With no more to say on the subject, Agatha looked expectantly at Ellen, ready for a question.

  “You mentioned Mrs. Hamilton is a close friend. Could you tell me how you met?” Ellen prompted.

  The woman nodded. “Actually, that fits in rather nicely with the story of my first days in this town. My in-laws decided to have a reception to honor us newlyweds. As you might imagine, I was nervous, wondering about the impression I would make. For several days, I went back and forth over what to wear. Julia and Mrs. Bright were right there with me, trying to decide. Finally, we agreed upon a dress that had a summer-green bodice and matching skirt. It also had just a hint of a striped silk underskirt. I had purchased the dress, along with three others, just a few days before my wedding. But the dress needed some alterations, especially around the neckline, which Mrs. Bright assured me was too daring for the good people of Opal’s Grove.

  “That’s where Ivy came in. She may have told you that even before she left Illinois, she had the idea of being a seamstress.”

  Ellen nodded. “She explained about her arrangement with the Archers, and I got the impression she was successful.”

  “Well, you’ll have to ask her the details. But when I arrived, she had a business going. Although there were ladies that thought her too young to be very skilled, she had many clients. Mrs. Bright swore by her. So a message was sent to Ivy, and in an hour or so, she appeared at the door. Seeing someone about my age was a bit of a surprise, but she proved in a short amount of time she knew what she was about. She listened to Mrs. Bright’s concern and then walked around me as I stood in the center of Mrs. Bright’s dressing room, modeling the dress. Finally, she turned to my mother-in-law and said quite seriously that she didn’t see anything wrong. The dress was in the latest style, and if the townspeople pretended to be shocked over a hint of décolletage, they had better quit stampeding to the opera house every time Polly Armstrong and her Theatricals came to town.”