Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

Betrayed and bereft of the support of her living family, respectable and desperate  young Sophia Brewer has gone west and taken up employment as a waitress with the Fred Harvey Company, who owned the restaurant concession along the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. This will be my next western adventure … Enjoy.

Chapter 11 – Chance Met in Newton

The brief four weeks of their probationary time passed as if in a dream for Sophia, the hours of the day marked by the whistles of arriving trains, and all active thought taken up with memorizing the minutiae of the Harvey system, of threading her way between lunchroom and kitchen, bearing trays throughout all the daylight hours and into the evening. On one particular morning, she looked up from pouring a cup of coffee at the lunchroom counter to meet the eyes of Mr. Harvey, thinly disguised in a lamentable overcoat and a hat which was the masculine equal of Siobhan Teague’s forlorn and unfashionable bonnet.

“Good morning, Mr. Harvey,” she retained enough self-possession to say – as if every morning she brought coffee to the head of the company. “What may I bring to you – Mr. Stahlmeyer’s bread and pastries always delight, and he has baked a prodigious number of them this morning…”

“I know,” Mr. Harvey grinned, for a moment wholly and uninhibitedly boyish. “I know everything about my enterprise … and of what I have forgotten, Dave and Ford remind me. So you are content in our house, Miss Teague?”

“I am, sir.” Sophia replied – for she was. As she accustomed herself to the work, and the manner of thinking behind it, her movements became swift, assured; indeed, she herself skimmed through the lunchroom with the very dance-like grace which she had envied in the other girls on the night of hers’ and Laura’s arrival. The cup codes, the way of setting a place, and taking an order swiftly and accurately became as much a second nature as breathing in a remarkably short time. Jenny Maitland was correct: she could do this.

“Good,” Mr. Harvey appeared to be very pleased. “Dave and I were certain you would be a girl who would work out – consider yourself a part of the company for the term of your contract; Miss Maitland has given a good report of you. Would you prefer to remain in Newton for now, or would you be willing to accept an assignment elsewhere as needed? Next year, if you choose to renew your contract, you may request an assignment anywhere along the AT&SA.”

“Newton for now, sir,” Sophia replied. “I have so many friends here already; I should dislike to be parted from them. There is still much for me to learn – and I would like to consider where I might go, then. As far from Boston as possible, I am certain.”

“New Mexico is a coming place,” Mr. Harvey agreed. “And the weather in California is very mild in comparison to Kansas. Take your time, Miss Teague. I understand that you are an orphan – consider the company to be your family at large.”

“I will, sir,” Sophia felt as light with relief as a balloon on a windy day – as light as she had on the day In Kansas City when Mr. Harvey said that she was hired. She was safe from Richard, of that she was certain –she slept well on most nights, being exhausted after a day of work. She had friends, allies, gainful and mostly respectable employment. The excitement of being at the crossroads of the west never palled; one spring day, three trains bearing the company and horses of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West extravaganza, on their way east. On another day it was a great party of Army officers, all hung about with gold braid – the girls working in the dining room insisted that General Phil Sheridan – the highest-ranking general in the whole Army of the West was among them.

On cold and blustery day which presaged the coming winter – which everyone assured Sophia would be colder and more storm-ridden than she could imagine – the last scheduled train of the day came and went, bringing the usual rush of hungry passengers into the dining room and the lunchroom, and bearing them away again a brisk half-hour later. There remained only a special train sitting on a side spur – engine, coal car and a single ornate palace car, with light seeping from behind closed curtains. The sides of the car were hung with dark fabric. Sophia, run off her feet with the rush to serve the regular passenger train travelers, had not paid it much attention, although every aspect of her world was now ruled by the railway and Fred Harvey between them. One of the busboys had brought supper to the engineer and the firemen and returned with the intelligence that the palace car belonged to a wealthy rancher. On a journey to Colorado, the rancher – a man of some years – had fallen ill and died. They were bringing him back to Texas to be buried in his home acres, the busboy said. The palace car had its own kitchen and staff; those passengers on it – apparently the rancher’s closest family – had no need of coming to the Harvey House. Now Sophia did wonder why the special was still waiting, as dusk swept down over the prairie like a vast dark wing, bringing with it a cool little breeze, smelling of dust and cut hay. Outside the stars in the eastern half of the sky began twinkling faintly, but mellow golden lamplight bathed the dining room, reflecting off the spotless white tablecloths, the twinkle of silverware laid out, and the great silver coffee urns. Sophia had been promoted from the lunchroom into the dining-room proper. Now she polished away an almost invisible splatter from the surface underneath the spout and regarded her station with anxious pride. It was very ordinary work, considered in one way; those whom she had associated with in Boston would have considered it demeaning, barely a step above from being a common housemaid. But out here – this was good and useful work, in which one could take pride. Ever at the back of her mind was Agnes’s girlish voice, saying in all earnestness that well-done work was worship.

And she was nearly at the end of her shift; twelve hours on her feet, in more or less constant motion; everything about her person, her actions, her words and her demeanor a living demonstration and testament to the Harvey ideal. She stifled a yawn behind her hand. The dining room was nearly empty; a handful of diners with time and leisure to enjoy their meal. Footsteps resounded along the station platform, and a pair of men came through the nearest door; the younger as tall as a tree, and very fair. He looked to be in his thirties or thereabouts. The other appeared some fifteen years older, wiry of build, fit and weathered by a lifetime in the out-of-doors. They both were in dark suits, with a band of black crepe on their coat sleeves; from that, Sophia assumed they were from the special train. No need to lend them a coat to sit in the restaurant. She put away her polishing cloth and showed them to the end of a table, noting as she did so that they were speaking German to each other.

“Would you prefer coffee, milk, iced or hot tea?” she asked courteously in that language and the younger gentleman’s eyebrows rose. If the older gentleman was likewise surprised, he concealed it quite well.

“Milch, bitte,” he replied and the younger man nodded. Sophia swiftly arranged the cups – upside down and apart from the saucer; she could already see Laura with the tray of jugs and carafes coming across the dining room. Laura poured out the milk – fresh, sweet and cold from the cool-room where it had been stored until just a few minutes before. The young man’s eyebrows rose again.

“How did she know?” he asked. “You never said a word!” The older gentleman laughed.

“It’s magic,” he said, cheerfully. “Don’t ask the magician – these Harvey Mädchen – how it is done, Peter.” Sophia recited the dinner menu for the day. The gentlemen both decided on fresh trout from Lake Michigan, with duchesse potatoes, and fresh green peas, with cheese, water-crackers and fresh fruit for afters. Before Sophia even took their order to the kitchen, Letty appeared with the salad course – fresh oranges, sliced into rounds, dressed with fresh onions and olives – and silently set them in front of the two gentlemen. The older gentleman took out his napkin, saying,

“The very first time I crossed from Texas to California, I would have thought myself in heaven to have sat at a meal such as this.”

“Times change, Onkel Fredi,” the younger said. “Now and again for the better. Not even Absalom could have contrived fresh lake trout in the middle of Kansas.”

“And Hansi’s palace car beats sleeping under the wagon, not so?” Sophia heard Uncle Fredi answer. Her apron rustled with the stiffness of many layers of starch applied. She thought wistfully of how it would have been pleasant to continue speaking German to Uncle Fredi and his tall nephew, Peter. She had learned the language because Great-Aunt Minnie spoke of it, saying that so many interesting things were written only in German – poetry and belles-lettres and matters of scientific interest … she had practiced assiduously in her schooldays with those native speakers of that tongue, but any conversation with diners save of the most brief was frowned upon – yea, discouraged.

When their orders emerged, piping-hot and savory, Sophia ferried them back to her station, laying down the plates with the care that Mr. Harvey had always insisted upon. It gratified her that Uncle Fredi and Peter both looked at their supper with delighted good appetite, but Peter stayed her as she would have rustled away.

“May we ask for a serving of this for my wife? And some fine soup and that good bread, as well. But taken to our coach … you see … we are in something of an emergency. Miss…”

“Teague,” Sophia answered, hardly noticing that he had switched over to English. “Miss Teague. I am certain this will be allowed – it is Mr. Fred Harvey’s dictate that every reasonable indulgence is taken for the satisfaction of our guests, but I must first ask permission of our manager.”

“Thank you,” The younger gentleman looked down at his exquisitely arranged plate; fine bone china, silverware all polished until it gleamed like glass. “You find us at an unfortunate moment in our lives, Miss Teague. My father-in-law, who has always guided our enterprises – he was gathered to his ancestors very suddenly, when we were in Colorado, examining the possibilities of expanding our holdings there. We are returning to Texas without any warning to our regular staff … and my mother-in-law is prostrated with grief. We await a visit from a doctor to attend on her, but in the meantime …”

“I couldn’t endure the megrims any longer, myself,” Uncle Fredi observed. “Up on the highest tower, or having fits of weeping in the cellar – that’s my sister.”

“They were married forty years, Onkel,” Peter sounded reproving. “You should be more understanding.”

“Understanding? Bosh, Peter lad. I’ve been understanding all the way from Raton.”

“It will be our honor and pleasure to assist you,” Sophia assured them, her spirits rising at this challenge. “And … my sincere condolences regarding your loss.”

“Thank you, Miss Teague.” Peter nodded; he looked genuinely grieved. “Put it all on our bill, of course.” Suddenly, his gaze sharpened. “Pardon me for asking – but you do not sound as if you are from around here…”

“I am from Boston,” Sophia replied, the customary refrain. “I am an orphan, without any brothers or sisters.”

“Boston?” The younger gentleman replied with brightening interest. “My father was from Boston. He came out to Texas in the earlies, for his health. Taught school, and fought at San Jacinto – had the biggest library there was in Austin, back then. Horace Vining – might you have heard of him?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sophia answered. “Although my grandfather was also named Horace Vining … but he has been dead these many years.”

“Still, we might be cousins, or something such,” Peter Vining turned his attention to his plate. Sophia took that as a hint, and rustled away to find Jenny Maitland to let her know about a supper tray for the ladies.

“Bring them some of Mr. Stahlmeyer’s good bread, and a little fresh fruit to go with it all,” Jenny Maitland approved enthusiastically, as Sophia had known that she would.

A

(Escaping from a truly dreadful  family situation and under an assumed name, the proper — and yet adventurous young Bostonian lady Sophia Brewer — has landed a job as a Harvey Girl. The year is 1886, and she has landed up in Newton, Kansa, to be trained in the Harvey method. The Newton Harvey house is a refuge for Sophia – and yet, can she do the kind of work which would be seen by kin and friends back in Boston as demeaning?)

Chapter 10 – Chance Met in Newton

Morning – if not precisely dawn – arrived far too early, in Sophia’s groggy estimation. The first harbinger sounded at first like a storm of blows upon the panels of the door to the room in which she and Laura had slept. She swam up out of as deep a state of sleep as she ever had had under the effect of Dr. Cotton’s disgusting potions, and the storm resolved into a polite tapping, and Jenny Maitland’s voice.

“Miss Teague, Miss Nyland? Wake up – there’s a train due into Newton in half an hour – and we must be ready. We’ll have our breakfast in the interval between that and the next, but you must be downstairs and inspection-ready in twenty minutes. Miss Teague…”

“I’m awake,” Sophia found her voice. From the other bed, she could hear Laura grumbling – probably strong oaths, from the level and passion of her voice. “So is Miss Nyland. We’ll be ready directly.”

There was some little starlight seeping into their room through the thin muslin curtains over the window which they had left open for fresh air. The moon was a small mother-of-pearl circle, just hovering over the buildings opposite – it shed just enough pale light to allow Sophia to light the gas fixture, as Laura heaved the bedclothes aside.

“Time to see to the cows,” she said, with remarkable cheer, and Sophia giggled.

“Not cows, Laura,” she replied, searching in her as-yet-unpacked carpet-bag for her cleanest shift. “But hungry travelers on the railway.”

“They wish to be fed, and will eat of what is put in front of them,” Laura replied. “Men … cows. Little difference that I can see.”

“Except that men don’t expect to be milked, as well.” Sophia said, and was disconcerted by Laura’s knowing chuckle.

“They want their service, just as the bull does,” Laura replied, inscrutably. She had found her stockings, and rolled them up around her pale shins as she sat on the bed. Sophia did not know what to say to that. She and Laura dressed in relative silence; combing out their long hair before the single mirror, and pinning it into plain and serviceable buns.

“We look like nuns,” Laura remarked, looking over Sophia’s shoulder as they stood in front of the small square of mirror over the wash-stand. Sophia regarded herself, and Laura – pale rounded faces reflected in the watery glass; Elsie collar buttoned high and close, plain black dress and narrow sleeves, with the white bibbed apron … it did appear positively nun-like. All that they lacked was a coif and a black veil. “I think that may be the idea,” Sophia replied. She had been considering this, ever since Jenny Maitland had outlined the code of appearance and dress, on the previous night. “You know how ordinary people think of a single woman who must work for a living, away from her family and friends … or at least, I know of how they are seen in respectable Boston society – most usually of the servant class and sometimes no better than they ought to be. It’s very hard, Laura, for a woman alone, without friends or family, to have any kind of respectable life … so Mr. Harvey and his strict rules are a defense, a protection, even – against vicious gossip. Like Caesar’s wife – we must be above suspicion.”

“You are likely right about this,” Laura made a brief moue of distaste. “Still – how very dull for us!”

“We may not flirt with customers, and we must not cultivate particular friendships among our fellow employees within the house … but Miss Maitland said that there was nothing in Mr. Harvey’s rules for us forbidding such attachments to gentlemen employed on the railroad. The telegraphists and engineers and such; they are reputed to be daring and clever young men, skilled and prepared to move up in the world. I might like to be courted by an intelligent and ambitious young man of no particular family background … if, that is – I would like to be courted at all…”

Sophia set down the comb with which she had been taming the last rebellious curls of her hair, bidding them forcefully to go along into the modest bun at the back of her head. “The main thing for me, Laura – I think I should like to work in something associated with the railroad – so new and exciting! You have no idea how boring my life in Boston was … there was not a person I knew, or met, save my great-aunt who had never had a thought or said a word that their farthest ancestors had not already said. I suppose that I have never felt quite so …alive. As if I were a new woman.”

“Me, I am tired of chickens and cows and slaving over a wash-tub,” Laura gave one last look at herself in the mirror. Sophia thought that Laura looked like some magnificent ancient Nordic goddess come to life. “Now – we go be new woman, ya?”

“Modern women,” Sophia echoed. They turned off the gaslight as they left their room. Out in the corridor there were already a bevy of girls in black dresses and white aprons, chirping excitedly or yawning. Sophia and Laura followed them down the staircase, through the kitchen – already a hub-bub of activity, redolent with the odor of baking bread and ham, of bacon and apple pies, muffins and sausages and clamorous with the voices of men shouting at each other in several languages besides English, and clanging iron pans on the tops of stoves – a clamor which diminished slightly at the first appearance of the girls in black and white. The girls went around the edge of the kitchen, into that hallway which led to the larders, the ice-room, the locked liquor store, the manager’s office, the telegraphist’s office, and the parlor set aside for the waitresses. This was a comfortable room, if set about with chairs, settees and tables of rather plain and unadorned make, all around the walls.  The parlor was brilliantly and mercilessly lit, the gas-lamps turned up to their highest extent so that it was nearly as bright as daylight. The girls made a circle, as if for a country-dance; Sophia and Laura followed suit – oh, yes, Jenny Maitland had told them the night before that she would inspect them – all of them and in a most stringent manner before they went on duty today.

Now the senior waitress went around the inside of the circle; each woman holding out her hands, first palm-up and then down for inspection. Jenny looked severely at their hands, their aprons and their hair, each in turn. Just as she began this process, a young man appeared in the doorway of the parlor, a piece of paper in his hand.

“Just come over the telegraph from Florence, Miss Maitland,” he said, with the air of someone bearing an important message. “Thirty-five for the lunchroom, twenty-four for the dining room.”

“Thank you, Mr. Boatwright,” Jenny said over her shoulder, “We’ll be ready.” The young man vanished like a mechanical Jack-in-the-box.   “You have a spot on your cuffs,” she said to the girl standing next to Laura. “Run upstairs and change – quick now.” Another girl had a crumpled apron – she also made a swift departure for upstairs, both of them returning, out of breath within a few minutes. Now all of her attention was on Laura and Sophia.  It appeared to Sophia that they both received a particularly exacting examination – for Jenny made them turn around, and to lift the hems of skirt and apron to show that they had on black shoes and stockings, and that their hair was tied with the plain white ribbon. Was this what it might be like to join the Army, she wondered – and found the supposition rather amusing.

“Miss Nyland, Miss Teague? You will start out in the lunchroom – it is sometimes a bit rowdier than the dining room, but the menu and the arrangements are somewhat simpler.”

“And the boys don’t tip like they do in there, either,” remarked one of the girls who had returned at that last minute. She had a gap between her teeth and wildly curly hair, even curlier than Sophia’s, but still firmly contained in a disciplined bun tied with a white ribbon. “But it’s a start. You follow after me, Miss Teague for the first round – watch what I do. I’m Selina Bennett – this’s my sister Frances. New girls always start in the lunchroom. Do you know the cup code yet?”

“Not well enough to be quick about it,” Sophia replied honestly, and Selina Bennett laughed, frank and honest. She and her sister both wore small round pewter brooches on their pinafores, each with an inset numeral 3.

“You’ll learn quick enough – it’s all very tidy and orderly; a systematical method for every motion, a place for everything, and everything in its proper place, just so. It’s like doing counted stitch needlework,” Selena added, as somewhere outside on the station platform, a whistle shrilled over the metallic shriek and clanging of a train coming into the station and applying the steam brakes.   To that symphony of noise was added the ringing notes of a gong.

“Here they come, girls,” Jenny Maitland swiped an invisible soot-fleck from her white apron. “The first train of the day – to work, now.”

Chapter 9 – The Harvey Way

            Her feet were feather-light, as Sophia sped down the stairway to the street, the load from her shoulders similarly light. Exuberant with joy and relief, she felt as if she should dance along the sidewalk, sing and shout. She was not tired, she was not a desperate and near to penniless fugitive. She had a pass for travel without charge on the next train … to Newton, which Mr. Benjamin had explained – with some amusement – was some six or seven hours journey farther west. She had just missed the most recent train west, and had some hours wait for the next. Her feet slowed … yes; there was one thing she ought to do, now that she was truly in the west. If she was a woman inclined to making careless, symbolic gestures, she might have dropped the gold Armitage engagement ring into the Missouri River, but the Brewers – and also the Teagues – were not given to indulge in such wastefulness.

The Union Depot in Kansas City seemed to be at the core of a district very like old North Town in Boston, which was a pity in Sophia’s eyes, for it was a magnificent building. It took her no little time, or distance from the ornamented red-brick façade and towers, to find a pawnbroker and get a hundred dollars for the gold, diamond, and pearl ring. She might have bargained for better, in accordance with the advice of Mendelson the Jew, but in truth she cared little enough, now that she was assured of employment by Harvey contract, and truly in the west … although so far, it did seem to be too much on the respectable side to be considered wild. She walked away from the pawnbroker’s establishment, feeling an odd sense of being unburdened. The last significant physical link to her old life was cut and she was free … or mostly free. She swung the carpet-bag as if it were a light thing. The railroad pass and the vouchers in her reticule crackled; the stiff paper they were written on a talisman and an assurance.

She found the proper platform for the next train, after assuring herself of the correct time. It was early yet, only mid-morning. There was only one other passenger waiting, a Junoesque young woman about her own age, in a plain dark traveling dress and jacket. She was a striking figure, with white-blond braids pinned in a coronet around her head, underneath the brim of her hat.   She also had a small trunk at her feet. Sophia wondered if she were also traveling to Newton – just as the young woman glanced in her direction and said,

“’ello – are you also for Newton? The train does not leave for another hour and a half. So Mr. Harvey told me.” The young woman had a faint, but pleasing accent; foreign-born, but fluent enough in English. Sophia rapidly made connections, from overheard mention.

“Are you Miss Nyland – Yes, I am also bound for Newton … to work in Mr. Harvey’s establishment. I am Sophie Teague– from Boston. I am an orphan, with no living family.”

“Oh!” the woman replied, instant sympathy in her face, and wide blue eyes. “How sad for you, Sophie! I am Laura Nyland, from Minnesota … and I have six brothers and five sisters, all older. My old papa; he cried when I said I would answer Mr. Harvey’s newspaper thing. But he gave me his blessing … I did not want to work on the farm any longer. You have not worked on a farm, Sophia? A very fine farm, but … oh, the muck! And the milking of cows, the laundry and the cooking … eh! To work in a fine restaurant! I like! And save for a dowry! I want to be married, some day – but to have a dowry. My papa could not afford a dowry for any past my third sister Kristin. My brothers, they find their own way – so why not I?”

“Indeed,” Sophia agreed, and settled onto the bench beside Laura Nyland. In the space of time spent waiting for the train and in spite of the considerable differences between them, she and Laura became fast friends, not least because Laura possessed a sharp eye and an even sharper wit … and a robust confidence in expressing it, which convulsed Sophia with laughter many times while they waited for the train, and during the hours to Newton. Laura had also been presented with a selection of sheets of paper, all printed in different typefaces, and not a few written out by hand.

“They want everything to be just so,” Laura pronounced, as they read them together, the fair head and the sandy-haired one bent together, as the midday train to Newton and points farther west rolled through Kansas. “There is a rule for everything.”

“But it is logical,” Sophia agreed. “This … it is nothing more than setting a proper table for a formal dinner party … haven’t you ever done such a thing, Laura?”

“On the farm!” Laura hooted with laughter. “With my brothers and the hired men hungry from a day of work? As if the forks and knives would even rest on the table next to the plate! And what is this … about cups and saucers?”

“A signaling code,” Sophia had already gone to the next page. “For what the guest has ordered to drink, so that it may be provided within seconds.”

“It is required to be efficient,” Laura nodded. “For the train stops for half an hour exactly for water and coal. In that time, they must order their meal, it must be served promptly and they must eat …”

“Did they say anything about where we shall live?” Sophia asked, regretting that she had either not pressed Mr. Benjamin for this intelligence, or if he had provided it, she did not recall.

“Above the restaurant,” Laura answered. “All the ladies live in rooms … two sharing. This is provided, as are all of our meals. But they are very strict with us. We must be home before a curfew at 11:00 every night, and if a gentleman wishes to pay court, he must ask permission, first. As if we were living with our very watchful papa and mama – but on one day a week, we are free to do what we wish. Is very good, Sophie – much better than the farm. And seventeen dollars a month! My papa paid the hired men only two dollars a month; my brother Sven is a carpenter in town, and he earns twenty dollars a month, when there is building in the summer. We will be earning almost as much as a man with a skilled trade, more than a woman teaching school! Think on that, Sophie!”

“We will have to earn it first,” Sophia warned, somberly. “And prove our worth in the first month.”

“Pooh! It is only work! I am not afraid of work!” Laura exclaimed; her confidence in herself was an infectious tonic. “Kansas now … the western territory – I do not know of this place, Sophie. Do you?”

Silently, they looked out of the train window, at the endless waves of grassland stretching as far as the eye could see; a sea of grass, with a faultlessly blue sky arching over it, an endless dome, unmarred by a single cloud. They had long left the river behind, and it seemed a long way between those small towns with names which suggested high civic hopes  – Osage City, Emphoria, Strong City … each a tiny island in the ocean of grasslands.

“It used to be called the Great American Desert, in the books of geography in my grandfather’s house,” Sophia said at last. “There was nothing but herds of buffalo, and wild Indians, and it was perilous beyond belief to venture into it, even on the established trail … but now it is becoming settled. The soil is very rich, they say.”

“No trees to clear away!” Laura giggled. For the first time since Lucius Armitage had fumbled with his hat and his calling card in the parlor of the Brewer house, all those weeks ago, Sophia felt a return to her usual good spirits. She was in the west, which was sufficiently far enough away from Boston, on the verge of an adventure, and had a place and purpose to go.

They reached Newton as dusk fell, sweeping down on the prairie like the wings of a vast dark bird. Stars had begun to spangle the night sky, as cold, pale and distant as the lanterns which lit the platform and the station were warm, golden and close. Sophia and Laura stepped down from the train.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Sophia asked. “Was there someone we should speak to? I suppose that we can ask for them.”

The other passengers alighting at Newton seemed to be making in a group toward the nearest doorway; a double door with large glass panes in the center of each. The doors allowed hints of the activity within to spill out onto the platform, and Laura sniffed appreciatively.

“Good food cooking!” she exclaimed. “This must be Mr. Harvey’s place.”

“I suppose we should go inside,” Sophia ventured, but before they could follow after the other passengers, a young woman emerged from between the doors – a young woman clad in a black dress with a narrow white collar and a starched white bibbed apron.

“Miss Teague and Miss Brewer?” she asked, with a smile. “Welcome to the Newton Harvey House – I am Miss Maitland – Jenny for short. Mr. Benjamin sent me a telegram this morning, telling me to expect you. You must be tired … and hungry, too. Come inside – but this will be the last time you will ever sit down when a train stops here.” Jenny Maitland added with a twinkle in her eye. “May as well eat first, and have some notion of what to expect – then I will show you upstairs when the rush is over.”

Sophia gasped involuntarily, on beholding the dining room; never in the world would she have expected such splendor in such a place as this – out beyond the frontier of the Missouri River; spotless white table linen, silverware that shone as splendidly as if it had just come from the hands of the silversmith, monogrammed china, all lade out with superhuman precision on each table. The room was presided over by a pair of enormous silver urns on a table of their own – a table also dressed with a faultlessly white cloth. Jenny showed them to a table in the farthest corner, saying,

“What would like to drink?”

“Milk for me,” replied Laura, and Sophia ventured,

“Tea – orange pekoe, if you …”

“Of course,” Jenny twinkled at them again, arranging one cup off the saucer, and the other – with the handle pointed in a specific direction. “You both look so hungry – let me bring you that which we have done the best with, today … and take your time in savoring it, for at least you do not have to get onto the train again in twenty-eight minutes.”

She swirled away, her skirts and apron rustling, to be replaced in seconds with another girl in a black dress and starched pinafore apron, bearing a tray laden with carafes. Milk for Laura, orange pekoe tea for Sophia, appeared as if by magic from the carafes – the girl grinned at them both and whispered,

“I’m Emily Adams – you must be the new girls!” She also swirled away, a black-and-white clad sprite in constant motion, before either of them could reply.

“It’s … marvelous,” Sophia ventured. “It’s like a dance – like a ballet. Look at them, Laura!”

The lamp-lit dining room presented a picture of constant purposeful motion – the dozen or so women in nun-like black dresses and white pinafores moving between the tables. Not a minute or two had passed since the passengers had come from the station platform;  now the women in black and white danced between the tables bearing plates – of soup, and salads, then bread and savory entrees, emerging from a farther door.

For once, Laura seemed to have lost some of her previous easy assurance.

“Oh, Sophie … do you suppose we will ever learn this?”

“We’d better do so,” Sophia pointed out. “If we want to earn that generous living, and you your dowry. Besides – they all have. Every one of these girls had to learn the system, and so can we.”

(Proper but desperate young Boston belle, Sophia Brewer is escaping from a number of demons, including her brutal and sociopathic brother, Richard. In her journey, she has been met with unexpected kindness, on her way to Kansas City to possible employment as a Harvey Girl.)

Chapter 8 – Away Into the West

            If Heaven were not as blissfully comfortable as a soft berth made up with crisp white sheets, Sophia thought as she slid between those sheets, then she would prefer spending eternity in a Pullman berth, rather than the glorious hereafter. She ached with weariness in every limb that did not ache already with barely-healed bruises, and to lie down in comfort was such bliss that she nearly wept with gratitude all over again. The noise of the train clattering over the rails, the sound of the engine was muffled to a considerable degree, and the motion rocked her gently, as in a cradle. Other passengers in the Pullman car had already retired, a few still awake, moving in the corridor between heavy curtains drawn for the night, but the small noise of their footsteps, conversation or snoring did not perturb Sophia in the least, or disturb her own slumber, which she fell into almost the moment she rested her head on the pillow. If at some moments she wakened during the night – startled awake by the motion of the train stopping, or starting again, she returned to sleep almost at once.

“I shall always be grateful for the invention of the steam engine,” she told herself, during one of those brief wakeful moments, feeling oddly cheerful. “And to the men who built the railways and Mr. Burton, and George … and to all of them. It will be the train which made an escape from Richard possible, and to get as far away from him as I can be.”

Awakening the following morning was nearly as blissful. For the first time in weeks, she felt quite well. The avuncular porter, George, tactfully guided her those few steps towards the tiny ladies’ sitting room compartment, where she was able to wash thoroughly as was possible and change into fresh clothes – since he thoughtfully had produced her carpetbag from the baggage car. Revived and rested, she felt restored to her own self – the proper and confident Miss Brewer of Beacon Street once again. When she emerged from the sitting room, it was to find the curtains all drawn back, the upper berths tidily folded away, and the lower transformed back into the comfortable settees which they were for the day of travel. Two ladies and a small boy dressed in a rumpled Knickerbocker suit shared the seats: a Mrs. Murray, her son Bertie and her mother, Mrs. Kempton. They greeted Sophia cheerily, obviously seeing her as an agreeable companion for the remainder of the journey. Mrs. Murray was journeying out to Kansas, to join her husband at an Army post there.

“I am Sophie Teague; on my way to Kansas City,” She vouchsafed nothing more than that, always recalling Declan’s warning to not make herself memorable. To her relief, Mrs. Murray and her mother were most incurious about her reasons for traveling, and more inclined to tell her about themselves, and of Colonel Albert Murray’s letters regarding what they might find at Fort Leavenworth.

“We will – if the train runs to schedule – be in Chicago tomorrow morning,” the elder lady assured her. “And then another long day and night to Kansas … Tell me, dear, will you be traveling on from there?”

“I might,” Sophia answered. “It all depends.”

Conductor Burton beamed on her with particular satisfaction, when he passed through on his rounds in mid-morning, and inquired of there were anything he could do for them.

“Better traveling with the other ladies than by your lonesome,” he murmured to her, when she thanked him again. “You never know what might happen, and I’d never forgive myself if it happened on my train, or to you, Miss Teague.” It also occurred to her that anyone observing her with Mrs. Murray and Mrs. Kempton would think they were all of one party.

Another day – this day not weighted with fear and misery – and another night passed, as the train steamed inexorably west, every minute and mile carrying her farther and farther from Boston. She dined with Mrs. Murray and Mrs. Kempton in the railway dining car, as they insisted most emphatically that she share their table. She felt obliged to repay them by amusing little Alfred – who was only six and rather bored with the limited amusements afforded for long stretches of the journey. He reminded her of Richie; frank, fearless and affectionate. Amusing him was a pleasure rather than a duty.

“The countryside is so lovely!” exclaimed Mrs. Murray, as a long vista of lake and meadow opened before them. “A perfect picture! Mama, doesn’t it remind you of some of those panoramic paintings displayed at the Philadelphia Exposition?”

“Store it up in your memory, dear,” Mrs. Kempton advised, “I fear that Kansas will be nothing like this.”

“What is Kansas like?” Sophia’s ears pricked up. If it worked out that she would be hired by Mr. Harvey for work in his railway restaurants, then she might very well be going even farther west than Kansas.  Working in some capacity for a railway concessionaire was looking more and more appealing by the moment.

“Flat and full of dust and flies, to hear dear Albert tell it,” Mrs. Kempton replied. “Or at least – that is what he complains of in his letters.”

If true, Sophia thought; Kansas was still a long way from Boston and from a vengeful Richard, who would never – even if he suspected that she were still alive – think to search for her on the wild frontier. And the farther she was from Boston – the safer she would be.

“My dear Miss Teague, have you ever seen such a city?” Mrs. Murray exclaimed in awe, the following morning, as they passed through Chicago. Conductor Barton had assured them, on his most recent perambulation through the car that they would be arriving there very shortly. “And it was burned to the ground not … how many years ago, Mama? And look – now, how splendid the buildings! Such a marvelous hive of industry and commerce; now, if Albert’s duties only kept him here, I would be quite content … save for the smells of the stockyard!” They all coughed, as a sudden throat-closing miasma made itself known on the spring breeze. Mrs. Kempton raised a handkerchief to her nose, and continued, somewhat muffled. “Oh, dear … they say that millions of western cattle are brought here daily to the slaughterhouses of Chicago.”

“Albert wrote about seeing such droves of cattle, being brought north from Texas – so many that the hills were entirely darkened … and the drovers who brought them! As wild as their cattle … just boys, most of them, without a soldierly discipline.”

“They do seem such romantic figures,” Sophia murmured, for young Seamus Teague’s exploration of the wild west had contained many such personages contained within the pages of his dime novels.

“Those are books,” Mrs. Murray tittered. “And there are many such accounts of soldiers, too – and I can assure you – that those tales are just as exaggerated. The realities of life are often romanticized beyond all recognition.”

“I expect that I will see for myself, very soon,” Sophia ventured.

Another night, another day – the country unfolding slowly before them, like the marvelous panorama paintings that Mrs. Murray described. Only this was real rather than the painted simulacrum; meadows blowing with spring wildflowers, the trees adorned with fresh green. The land seemed somehow flatter than what she had been familiar with for so long – as if some giant had pulled the wrinkles out of a counterpane so that it all lay smooth. On the third day since leaving Boston, the train rumbled across a very long iron bridge. The river lay, smooth as silk and seemingly as wide as an ocean.

“That is the Missouri River down there,” Mrs. Kempton said, “We can now say that we are in the west. We’ll be arriving very soon now.  Dear Miss Teague; are you being met by friends? You have been such a boon companion; I do not like to think of you, alone and adrift, so far away from home.”

“I have an appointment,” Sophia assured her. “It was for such that I came to Kansas City – an offer of employment.”

“Oh?” It seemed to Sophia that Mrs. Murray’s attitude towards her had chilled a degree or two, and she hastened to reply, feeling a sense of regret. She had been in her proper company for two days and two nights, and now it appeared that she was about to fall from it once more. “I had been as a housekeeper and governess to a distant relation; a situation which did not please me. My cousin’s wife took liberties with my situation, presuming on family loyalties which she would not have dared ask of a hired employee. I thought that I might seek a paid position in a similar capacity. At least – such would be more honest in the exchange of work for pay, rather than no pay and a tenuous social position as an object of charity. ”

“Quite right, my dear,” Mrs. Kempton assured her – most unexpectedly. “Being the object of charity is never comfortable for a young woman of spirit. It would have been seen as scandalous, when I was a girl – but times have changed, and I am assured that it is often quite respectable to expect a wage. Women have talents – interests and abilities outside of marriage – that condition which most assume is all that we have the capability for. I have often thought that a woman ought to have more … choices in the world, and thereby turn to our most natural role as wife and mother with a most willing heart.  Have you read the writings of Mrs. Elizabeth Stanton – she is a most particularly outspoken champion of the natural rights of women…”

“Oh, Mama…” Mrs. Murray exclaimed, with a touch of exasperated embarrassment.

“I know of Mrs. Stanton,” Sophia answered, with a feeling of having come all unexpected upon a spring of fresh water in a barren land. “She was a particular friend of my great-aunt Minnie – who also lectured unceasingly on the cause of abolition …”

“It has never ceased to amaze me,” Mrs. Kempton swept over her daughter’s rebuke with a magnificent display of indifference, which reminded Sophia most piercingly of Great-aunt Minnie, “How the full rights of citizens could be invested upon Negro males of suitable years, and yet be withheld from those females of every color and station, who campaigned tirelessly for those same rights. It is as if – the labor of females of every station is only regarded as worthy when it is expended in the cause of every other than our own. To the advantage of men … naturally.”

“Mama!” Mrs. Murray protested once again, but there was no time for further discussion, for the train was slowing as it approached the station; here the reverse of departing from Boston, in a tangle of shining steel rails which reminded Sophia of strands of hair, all arranged by the strokes of a comb. The came the metallic shriek of the engine wheels sliding against the rails as the brakes took hold, steam escaping everywhere.

There was a tall man in Army blue waiting on the platform; small Bertie shouted,

“Papa!” as he ran ahead of his mother and grandmother. In a moment, Sophia stood by herself, with her carpetbag in her hand, watching the joyous reunion with wistful eyes. She turned, hearing a respectful cough at her side, to see George, the porter.

“I never get tired of watching folk,” he confessed. “Happy, or sad, eager to travel on, grateful to be home … is there anyone meeting you today, Miss Teague?”

“No,” Sophia replied. “But I do have an appointment, at the office of Mr. Fred Harvey. Can you direct me to it?”

“Mr. Harvey? I don’t know that Mr. Fred Harvey is in town at this moment – he been feeling poorly of late – but Mr. Benjamin most certainly is. The office is in the Annex – I’ll have one of the newsboys show you.” George shook his head, sadly. “This Union Depot is the largest train station outside of New York, they tell me … and one of the most confusing. They call it the Insane Asylum … here, did I say something wrong?” he added, for Sophia had flinched. “They call it that, for the grand muddle that it is – towers on towers and domes on domes, and ornament stuck on every which way. But it’s in the West Bottoms – right handy for freight, but not such a genteel neighborhood, especially not after dark.”

“It is enormous,” Sophie recovered sufficiently to admire the station itself. “And very modern, I think.” What was even more entrancing to her was the sheer purposeful energy of the place, like a kind of lightening which never stopped; constant motion, the near to incessant noise of trains, of barrows of luggage shouldered past by large sweating men in rough clothing, while the newsboys shouted their wares. Steam whistles, the rumble of wheels, half-heard conversations

“It’s the busiest station on this stretch of the river.” George’s uniformed chest appeared to expand with pride. “They say that if you sat in the main hall watching long enough, you’d see anyone of renown in this whole United States. Here now, Miss Teague – if you go out this door, and go along to the telegraph office, you’ll see the sign for the Harvey offices. Are you interviewing to work in one of Mr. Harvey’s places?”

“I am …” Sophia nodded, and to her vague surprise, George looked as though he approved. “I hope …”

“Oh, you’ll be taken on, Miss Teague,” he assured her. “I seen a lot of those Harvey girls at work, and even more who come to interview with Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Harvey. You be just the kind they hire … proper ladies, but willing to work. You’ll do fine. It’s a good job – bed and board, passes to travel for free on the railway – and fine folk to work for, if a mite persnickety. But so’s working for Mr. Pullman. You work for them – well, that’s something to take pride in; you know you are somebody!”

“Thank you, George,” Sophia shifted her carpetbag to her other hand. “For your encouragement and not least for what you have done for me on this journey. I think that I can see where the telegraph office is.”

“You take care now, Miss Teague,” And a broad and merry grin split his face. “See you out on the railway sometime, you hear?”