The Pursuit of Lucy Banning,A Novel (Avenue of Dreams) Read online

  “What about his father?”

  Charlotte merely shook her head more vigorously. Rather than dissolving in tears, she composed herself and straightened her posture. “Henry and I are on our own.”

  “He can’t be more than six weeks old.”

  “Three weeks and two days. He came early, but he’s growing every day.”

  What an impossible situation, Lucy thought. Obviously Charlotte could not keep a baby in the household. Whatever situation made her abandon her previous home with a newborn and no job must have been dire. Under what circumstances could hiding a baby be the better option? Lucy had witnessed the wrenching hearts as mothers left their children at St. Andrew’s. Many of them intended to visit regularly. Employment obligations, distance, lack of transportation, living on a pittance—these added up to notes meant to substitute temporarily for visits, and gradually lengthy lapses between notes, and finally the realization that children who did have a parent would nevertheless grow up in St. Andrew’s along with children who did not. Lucy understood Charlotte’s reluctance to leave her baby in the care of another woman, yet keeping him at the Banning house would never work. He would get older and bigger and louder and need more attention than a working maid could give. Neither Penard nor Mrs. Fletcher would stand for it, not to mention Samuel and Flora.

  It simply wasn’t done on Prairie Avenue.

  “Charlotte, you look like you haven’t slept,” Lucy said softly.

  “Four nights now, miss,” Charlotte confessed. “Henry sleeps all day as long as I can sneak up and feed him, but he wants his mama at night.”

  “Of course he does.” With gentle pressure on the maid’s arm, Lucy guided her to sit with her at the table. The unpadded straight-back chairs felt narrow and unfamiliar. Lucy couldn’t help but glance around the kitchen, soaking in details of food preparation mystery. Pots hung on hooks from the ceiling, and bins held flour, sugar, and potatoes. Knives on a butcher block awaited the next meal. Open shelves held the dishes she supposed the servants ate off, and a wide modern stove gleamed.

  “I wanted some hot water to give him a bath,” Charlotte explained. “I would not have brought him down with me if I had known you were home. I’m so sorry I disturbed you, miss.”

  “That’s not important, Charlotte. The question is what are you going to do with Henry?”

  Charlotte raised her eyes and fixed them on Lucy’s face for the first time. “Are you going to tell Mr. Penard? Or your parents?”

  Charlotte had every reason to ask, Lucy knew. One word from her and Charlotte would be out on the street without even the wages she had earned in the last two days. Penard never would have entertained hiring a maid with a baby, and Flora Banning never would have given approval. No one in the household was attached enough to the new maid to argue she should be kept on after such deception. A maid in Charlotte’s position was up early, before the family, and worked long hours until well after dark. She might have a couple of hours in the afternoon when she could get off her feet and put her hands to work on mending or other needlework for the family. Her job was to take care of the family’s needs, not look after a child who would grow in mobility, appetite, and demands.

  “If it’s all the same to you, miss,” Charlotte said, “I’ll just duck upstairs for my things. I can be gone before anyone else comes home.” She stood and turned toward the stairs.

  Lucy put a hand on Charlotte’s arm. “No, please don’t do that.”

  “But, Miss Lucy—”

  “We’ll figure something out.” Lucy pressed her grip more firmly. “I’d like to help you.”

  Charlotte’s gaze drifted around the kitchen, uncertain.

  “Charlotte, please, let me help. I have connections. I can make some telephone calls. Perhaps you don’t know of my volunteer work at St. Andrew’s Orphanage.”

  “Henry is not an orphan!” A sob stole breath in Charlotte’s protest.

  “No, of course not,” Lucy was quick to reassure. “He has you. Many of the children at St. Andrew’s have one parent.”

  “I can’t put him in a place like that. I won’t.”

  “The children there are well cared for, I assure you.” Lucy began to feel defensive. It wasn’t as if Charlotte had other viable options. “They are fed, they sleep in warm beds, and they go to school. You can visit whenever you like.”

  “But it’s such a big place, Miss Lucy, and so many children. How can they look after my little Henry?”

  It was a good point, and Lucy didn’t have to be a mother to understand. “Sometimes the director is able to place babies in homes with women who care for them,” Lucy explained. “I don’t know if any of these women are available right now, but please let me try.”

  “How will he eat?” Charlotte asked.

  “A wet nurse,” Lucy answered, “or Nestle infant formula, which would not cost you anything.”

  “Will I be able to see him on my afternoons off?”

  “Any time you want. You can even take him on outings, if you like.”

  “They won’t try to adopt him out?”

  “Not if you don’t want them to.”

  Charlotte pressed her lips together, then said, “You would really do this for me? Without saying anything?”

  “Yes, Charlotte, I will—if you’ll let me.”

  “When?”

  “It might take a few days to arrange,” Lucy admitted. “You could leave him at St. Andrew’s until—”

  “No! I don’t want to take him there. It’s bad enough to give him to another woman.”

  “Very well.” Lucy backed off. “But it will still take a few days, and you’re both at risk in the meantime. Are you sure you want to take that chance?”

  Charlotte stroked her son’s cheek. “I have to.”

  “I can’t talk to the orphanage director until Monday,” Lucy explained, “and then we’ll have to wait to see what he can arrange. The fair dedication is on Friday, and I know things are going to be bustling around here getting ready for that. I can’t make any promises about how quickly this can be done if you’re not willing to leave him at St. Andrew’s.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “No. I’d rather take my chances with Mr. Penard.”

  “Very well, then. One step at a time. I promise I will not say a word to anyone.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Charlotte whispered, her eyes lowered.

  Lucy held out her arms. “Let me hold your baby. That will be thanks enough.”

  Smiling with pride, Charlotte laid her son in Lucy’s arms. He blinked his eyes twice, then closed them, seeming to settle in securely.

  “He trusts you,” Charlotte said.

  “I hope to live up to his trust and yours,” Lucy answered.

  Charlotte’s gaze settled on the forgotten art textbook on the table. “That book must weigh more than Henry,” she said. “It looks like a fancy schoolbook.”

  Lucy glanced at the book, then back at Charlotte. “I have a secret of my own,” she confessed. “It is a schoolbook. I’m enrolled in an art history course at the University of Chicago.”

  Charlotte’s eyes widened. “And Mr. and Mrs. Banning don’t know? Is that the secret?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Only my Aunt Violet knows. Everyone else thinks I’m at the orphanage more than I am.”

  “But Mr. Daniel—”

  “He would not understand.”

  “Your secret is safe with me, Miss Lucy. No one will hear any different. Are you going to earn a college degree like your brothers?”

  Lucy shrugged. “One step at a time, just like you.”

  Charlotte smiled, looking at Lucy full on. “What a pair we are.”

  Lucy looked around the room once again. “If I’m caught in here, I’ll be in as much hot water as you are. We should both be on our ways.”

  Charlotte laughed. “I’m not allowed in some rooms of the house, either.”

  Lucy was relieved the young woman could manage a laugh in her dilemma. C
harlotte was only slightly younger than she was. Only the circumstances of birth separated them. How easily she could have been the troubled maid and Charlotte the privileged daughter.

  “Have you had enough to eat? You would know better than I what’s available, but please take something with you. Some cheese and meat, perhaps?”

  “Yes, Miss Lucy.” Charlotte took a napkin from a basket, opened it, and laid two biscuits and a chunk of cheese in it before knotting it securely.

  “You’d better get Henry upstairs.” Lucy handed the child back to his mother.

  Lucy picked up her book. She still had plenty of time ahead of her to read and study. After opening the door that would take her back through the butler’s pantry to her own world, she turned to watch as Charlotte moved toward the narrow stairs that led to hers.

  “I promise, Charlotte,” Lucy said, “I will figure something out and find a way to speak to you.”

  “Yes, Miss Lucy.” Charlotte disappeared up the stairs.

  Lucy reentered the dining room, crossed through the foyer, climbed the marble steps, and glided down the hall to her suite. Once again she was alone with her book and her secret, but this time keenly aware that another young woman was in a room above her with another secret. Her misgivings about Daniel and her clandestine class attendance seemed so much less risky than what Charlotte faced. Her life would have awkward moments but would not change drastically if her covert activities were discovered. Charlotte, however, had everything to lose—even her son.

  Upstairs, Charlotte changed the baby, fed him, and hoped for a nap herself. As she dozed off, with her baby in the crook of her arm, she had the sensation that the scene in the kitchen had been a dream. Perhaps she had been napping all along. Was it truly possible she was not alone? That someone like Lucy Banning wanted to help her? That Henry could be safe and loved?

  10

  Lucy squirmed in the pew, and her mother glared at her as if she were a squirrelly six-year-old. She stilled her knees and transferred motion to her eyes. Arches and buttresses and high curved ceilings annoyed Lucy more every week, not to mention the elaborate casing around hundreds of organ pipes across the front of the church. Such impracticality. What was so sacred about the Middle Ages that architects are still trying to re-create it? she wondered. Prairie Avenue was full of homes built on a Gothic premise, and nearby Second Presbyterian Church fit right in. The twentieth century was less than ten years away. Perhaps the current Arts and Crafts movement in which Flora Banning dabbled would take hold and move architecture in a forward direction.

  The Bannings’ pew, for which Lucy’s father duly gave a generous donation each year to the church, was situated toward the front to the right of the center aisle. Lucy had sat in this pew since she was a small child, when the current building opened in 1874. The Bannings had not yet moved to Prairie Avenue, but they joined the church as soon as it opened in a neighborhood that seemed to attract wealthy families. The Jules family had the pew behind them for many years, before they moved to Riverside and transferred their membership.

  As Lucy blossomed and Daniel began to regard her more seriously as his future wife, he started sitting with the Bannings. Now on the weekends when he stayed in the city rather than take the eleven-mile Burlington-Northern train ride to Riverside, Daniel positioned himself at Lucy’s left elbow in the Banning pew.

  The balconies on three sides of the eight-hundred-seat sanctuary were full, even though there were plenty of available seats below. A quick scan revealed that, as usual, the seats above were filled with servants and working families who would never afford the donation required for the privilege of sitting on the main floor. The injustice made Lucy want to squirm again.

  Lucy blinked twice to return her focus to the words coming from the man in the pulpit. The sermon text was from James, one of Lucy’s favorite portions of the Bible. Her mind’s eye could see the words of James 2 on the page of her own Bible on the cherrywood table next to her bed: “If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” She loved the confrontation to action that threaded its way through the entire book of James. In her mind, it was inescapable. Nevertheless the preacher seemed to be finding his way out of James’s demands for compassion. Does he even see the people in the balconies? she wondered.

  She glanced at Daniel, who caught her eye and leaned his head to whisper, “Wonderful sermon, don’t you think?”

  Lucy wanted to sigh. No, she wanted to get up and stomp out of church.

  Of course Daniel would find the sermon wholly acceptable because it asked nothing of him. Was he even listening? Or was his mind already on the business deals of the week ahead? They were planning to spend the day together: dinner with her family—which Charlotte would have to help serve while her baby slept upstairs—followed by a long walk if the fine weather held, a private supper in the parlor, and a carriage ride.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Charlotte used to look forward to Sunday mornings. Brightness emblazoned her grandmother’s face on Sunday mornings, and Charlotte wanted her face to know that brilliance someday. But then her grandmother had passed away, and no one cared whether Charlotte went to church. She had not been in years. Now no one there would understand what had become of her life.

  But what would it be like to go to church in Chicago? Charlotte wondered. She had served the Bannings their eggs Benedict breakfast and watched them arrange themselves in the most spacious carriage for Archie, the footman and assistant coachman, to drive them to Second Presbyterian Church. No one coming to this part of town could miss the church. Even Charlotte had seen its Gothic tower before she found her way to the Banning house a few blocks away. It was the landmark everyone used to give directions to Prairie Avenue. The building could hold ten times as many people as filled the church of her childhood. Perhaps the voice would be different there. Perhaps someone would understand what had become of her life.

  Of course Charlotte couldn’t go to church. Even if Sunday morning responsibilities offered respite—which they did not—she could not be seen with Henry by anyone who might follow her trail back to the Banning home. She learned the hard way in a farming community, where the nearest neighbors were two miles away and nevertheless everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. And if she boarded Henry with a woman and ever had a Sunday morning off, she would use it to go see Henry, not God. She was pretty sure her grandmother had been wrong about God always being with her, and the truth was she was not inclined to go looking for him now. Her rare prayers were more like wishing hard than thinking anyone was listening.

  On this particular morning, Charlotte wasn’t seeing either Henry or God. Her baby was sleeping soundly upstairs.

  After forming the chilled rice into small mounds for Mrs. Fletcher to fry into croquettes, Charlotte snatched twenty minutes to check on him. Her heart nearly stopped when she found him awake and thrashing against the side of the carpetbag. If he cried out, no one would hear him two floors below amid the kitchen clatter, but she hated to think he would feel for a moment that she was not attentive to his distress. Only repeated heavy exhaling had allowed her to leave him again and prepare to serve Sunday midday dinner.

  The meal boasted cream of mushroom soup, baked halibut, roast duck, rice croquettes, stewed peas, Parisian salad, and baked apricot pudding. Mr. Penard selected gold-rimmed white china and instructed the maids to set the table with the gold linens to match. To Charlotte’s mind, the family hardly noticed the preparations, which was no doubt Penard’s goal. If someone commented on the table setting or the food, it would have meant something was amiss. While Penard served, she held her position at attention in the
butler’s pantry, peeking through the narrowest of cracks where the tall door was almost imperceptibly ajar. When she saw Penard’s subtle signal for her assistance, she entered the dining room, then disappeared again as soon as she dispatched her task.

  Charlotte could see Lucy’s face, how she smiled politely at her fiance’s chatter and caught the eye of Mr. Leo across the table in an unspoken secret language. She saw how Lucy tilted her head to listen deferentially to her father’s analysis of the morning church service and reached to squeeze her mother’s hand with affection that seemed genuine to Charlotte. And she saw how Lucy’s gaze rose periodically to the door behind which Charlotte stood, subtly but expectantly, as if hoping Charlotte would appear. Charlotte, however, kept her eyes down whenever Penard summoned her. Only that morning, he had admonished her.

  “Never look directly at any family members while serving.”

  “No, sir, of course not,” Charlotte replied.

  “And never speak unless spoken to.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Never offer an opinion. Answer questions as briefly as possible.”

  “I know my place, sir.”

  “See that you don’t forget.”

  Charlotte would put her own composure at risk along with her employment if she allowed herself to look into the face of this woman who had held Henry twenty-four hours ago and promised to help.

  As the meal came to an end with the pudding and coffee, family members gradually excused themselves for Sunday afternoon leisure in the parlor, leaving only Daniel and Lucy lingering at the table. When Daniel looked momentarily vexed at the presence of soiled dishes in front of him, Penard crooked a gloved finger at Charlotte. She stepped once again into the dining room and as unobtrusively as possible cleared space in front of Daniel and Lucy.

  “My dear Lucy,” Daniel was saying, “your hesitancy to talk about our wedding befuddles me. You may make every arrangement you wish. I only ask that you agree to a date so that we don’t find ourselves without an appropriate venue.”